TBILISI: The speaker of Georgia’s parliament said on Monday ruling party lawmakers would move to impeach the pro-Western president ahead of a parliamentary election on Oct 26, a year after a previous impeachment effort failed.
In a press briefing, Shalva Papuashvili said the charges against President Salome Zourabichvili concerned visits overseas that he said had not been authorised by the government, the same accusations levelled in the previous impeachment last year.
The ruling Georgian Dream party and its allies currently lack sufficient votes in parliament to impeach Zourabichvili, and Papuashvili said he hoped the measure would be passed after the election by a new parliament.
Though elected in 2018 with the support of Georgian Dream, Zourabichvili, whose powers are mostly ceremonial, has since become a foe of the bloc and its powerful founder, billionaire ex-prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili.
She has in recent weeks been attempting to broker pacts among Georgia’s divided and fractious opposition parties, aimed at ousting Georgian Dream at the polls. A Paris-born former French diplomat of Georgian ancestry, Zourabichvili last week met the presidents of France, Germany and Poland as well as senior European Union officials during a trip to Europe.
The EU said last week it had suspended all high-level contacts with the Georgian government over its “anti-Western and anti-European narratives”. Though Georgia has been broadly pro-Western since independence from Moscow in 1991, foreign and domestic critics have accused Georgian Dream of seeking to sabotage Tbilisi’s long-standing goals of EU and Nato membership and reorient the country towards Russia.
Tunisia's President Kais Saied gives a speech at the government's swearing-in ceremony at the Carthage Palace outside...
An election worker processes ballots at Philadelphia's vote counting facility on Pennsylvania's primary election day...
An image of an injection being filled.— Reuters/file LONDON: A British doctor on Monday pleaded guilty to an...
Thailand's Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra speaks during a press conference after a special cabinet meeting at...
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from launch complex-40 carrying the European Space Agency Hera spacecraft on a...
This picture taken on October 1, 2024 shows Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba posing during a photo session...