MADRID 25 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Kobajidze, appointed three new ministers this Monday in a reshuffle of his Cabinet that takes place a month after the controversial parliamentary elections, the results of which have generated waves of protests and led to the opposition to denouncing electoral fraud.
Thus, Maka Bochorishvili will become the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while Anri Ojanashvili will be the Minister of Justice. They are joined by David Songulashvili, the new Minister of Environment and Agriculture. The rest of the Cabinet will remain unchanged, according to information from the news portal NewsGeorgia.
This measure comes shortly before the first legislative session in Parliament since the elections and despite the demonstrations in a country where the ruling Georgian Dream party has been in government for more than twelve years.
It is expected that several opposition parties will not attend Parliament throughout the day as a sign of protest and rejection of these appointments. The swearing-in of the new ministers will take place in the absence of international representatives and leaders as tensions rise domestically.
The prime minister has stressed that his Government “continues to work for the country” despite the fact that thousands of people have taken to the streets since the end of October to demand a repeat of the elections.
However, the president has expressed his confidence that the opposition parties, which continue to “boycott the results”, will end up giving in. “We trust that they will end up sitting in Parliament,” he said.
The president herself, Salomé Zurabishvili, has appealed the official results to the Constitutional Court in an attempt to overturn the election results. The lawsuit filed by Zurabishvili “refers to the violation of two constitutional rights: that of universality and that of the secret vote.”
Zurabishvili already announced in early November his intention to hold new elections after accusing the ruling party of having taken over the institutions after winning the elections with just over 53 percent of the votes. The head of state has emphasized that although Georgian society “is European and democratic”, it is subject to “a single-party government that has taken over the institutions.”