Georgia’s president faces impeachment

Georgia’s ruling party will make a new attempt to remove President Salome Zourabichvili from office due to her “illegal” international visits, the parliament speaker in the former Soviet republic has said.

Shalva Papuashvili announced the plans of the Georgian Dream party during a briefing on Monday. The party is aiming to secure more seats in the October 26 election, which would allow it to push through the impeachment, according to Papuashvili.

The Georgian government withdrew its mandate for the president to represent Tbilisi internationally last year, following Zourabichvili’s criticism of the country’s direction in an annual report to the nation. The president defied MPs by meeting foreign officials on several occasions, in violation of Georgian law, the country’s constitutional court ruled in October 2023.

An impeachment attempt against Zourabichvili failed in parliament the same month, when the motion was supported by 86 MPs. A two-thirds majority is required in the 150-seat legislature to oust the sitting president.

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The French-born politician was elected in 2018 for a six-year term, which expires in mid-December. The Georgian presidential office was granted major powers in 2004 under Mikhail Saakashvili, but was largely stripped of them in a series of reforms in 2010, 2017, and 2018.

The position is now largely ceremonial, with MPs rather than all Georgian voters selecting a candidate to fill the post. Zourabichvili is the last person to assume the presidency through a general election.

The president apparently gave cause for a new impeachment attempt with her visit to Germany last month, where she met members of the Georgian diaspora to campaign for opposition forces in the upcoming election.

Levan Machavariani, an MP from Georgian Dream, argued that the president broke not only the country’s constitution, but also German rules prohibiting political campaigning on its soil by foreign political forces.

The ban was issued by the German Foreign Ministry in 2017 amid a row over visits by Turkish politicians to rally citizens living in the EU nation. The restriction applies three months prior to an election date, with an exemption made only to other members of the European bloc.

Berlin reportedly distanced itself from the Georgian event in Berlin, although Michael Roth, the chair of the Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee, praised it and claimed it was “a shame” that the Georgian embassy did not support Zourabichvili’s trip.