Georgia Ruling Party Opens Parliament Defying Opposition Boycott
(Bloomberg) -- Georgia’s ruling party convened parliament for its first session since last month’s election even as opposition lawmakers enforced a boycott and protesters continued street demonstrations over the results.
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Georgian Dream is using the session to ratify the makeup of the new parliament and re-elect the speaker, and on Tuesday plans to set a date for new presidential elections. The party later will vote on confirming its nominee for prime minister, Irakli Kobakhidze. Georgian Dream’s founder, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, attended Monday’s opening session.
Following weeks of rallies over alleged fraud in last month’s vote, crowds of people marched across the city and demonstrated all night outside the legislature. Police on Monday prevented them from approaching the parliament building.
Since the election, law enforcement has twice broken up an opposition camp in the center of Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, and have detained more than a dozen people.
The election authorities finalized the results three weeks after the Oct. 26 vote, giving 89 of 150 assembly seats to the ruling party. Four opposition parties that back the pro-Europe President Salome Zourabichvili, whose position is largely ceremonial, have threatened not to take up their mandates in protest.
Zourabichvili and a group of 30 opposition lawmakers have filed Constitutional Court motions to nullify the election results.
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