Independent candidate Salome Zurabishvili, supported by the ruling party “Georgian dream”, won the second round of elections of the President of Georgia on the results of counting 100% of the vote

Salome Zourabichvili / wikipedia.org

Independent candidate Salome Zurabishvili, supported by the ruling party “Georgian dream”, won the second round of elections of the President of Georgia on the results of counting 100% of the vote.

Zurabishvili scored 59,52% of votes (1 147 627 votes), and its rival, the candidate from opposition party “United national movement” Grigol Vashadze – scored 40,48% (780 633 votes), reports “Interfax” with reference to the Central election Commission (CEC) of Georgia.

Voter turnout in the second round of elections amounted to 56,23%. The inauguration of the President, under the Constitution of Georgia, to be held on December 16.

Earlier today, November 29, Zurabishvili said to journalists that it “will be very big responsibility to take up the post of the President of Georgia,” noting that “expected his election victory and believed in the support of the voters.” “I promise to be a President of all citizens of Georgia regardless of for whom they voted in the election. My most important task as President will be the consolidation, the consolidation of society, adoption of peace and stability in the country”, – quotes the elected President TASS.

The second round of elections was held on Wednesday, November 28. The evening of the same day, it was clear that Salome Zurabishvili, the leader. Meanwhile, the opposition is in no hurry to recognize the results of elections, and ex-President of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili declared that the election was undemocratic.

“I will never recognize the results of these elections. What happened today – it was not an election. It was not a democratic process,” said Saakashvili, who is now in the Netherlands. He urged citizens of Georgia to start a protest and go to the position of the mass disobedience to the authorities.

Salome Zurabishvili was born in Paris in 1952, in a family of Georgian political émigrés who left Georgia in 1921. He graduated from the Institute of political Sciences of France, he studied at Columbia University and specialized in the study of Russia. Since 1974 worked in the structure of the Ministry of foreign Affairs of France, from the end of 2003, he was Ambassador of France in Georgia.

In March 2004, President Saakashvili appointed her foreign Minister of Georgia in October 2005 she was dismissed from this position after public criticism of Saakashvili. Then she was in opposition, participated in actions demanding the resignation of Saakashvili. In 2016 she was elected Deputy of the Parliament of Georgia. In August 2018 Zurabishvili said that he will run for President as an independent candidate.

In the first round Zurabishvili scored 38,66% and its opponent Vashadze – 37.7% of the vote. Third place in the election went to the candidate from the party “European Georgia,” David Bakradze, the voices which gave about 175 thousand people (10,97%). For the leader of labour party Shalva Natelashvili voted 3,76% of the voters.

The current elections are the last direct election of the President of Georgia: the country’s constitutional reform turns it into a parliamentary Republic.