Fifth President’s election proposal ‘good dream,’ Kakha Gogolashvili

Kakha Gogolashvili, Senior Fellow and Director of European Studies at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS), has described fifth President Salome Zourabichvili’s recent call for early elections as a “good intention” - but one that would require “significant public mobilisation and international involvement to become reality.”

“The statement in itself, is a good intention, a good dream,” said Gogolashvili. “But in order to force early local and parliamentary elections, there must be a serious protest around it. This requires the involvement of international organizations, pressure, etc.”

Zourabichvili said “We demand parliamentary elections, and if we cannot achieve this by October and it is not scheduled, then jointly – local and parliamentary elections.”

Gogolashvili warned that such a goal was unlikely to succeed unless the opposition committed to participating in the local elections. “All this cannot be implemented if the opposition does not explicitly declare that it will participate in local elections,” he said. “If the protest does not mobilize around this, simply stating a wish to hold both elections together will be dismissed by the ruling party.”

He added that a coordinated approach would strengthen the opposition’s position. “Protest around this is possible only if the opposition has agreed and decided that it will participate in local elections, but at the same time demands that parliamentary elections be called. These are not mutually exclusive.”