https://www.rt.com/information/610632-zourabichvili-georgia-us-mccain/‘Again to her employers’: Professional-Western Georgian ex-president appointed to US fellowship

Former Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has turn out to be a fellow on the McCain Institute at Arizona State College, the US educational establishment has stated. Georgia’s parliament speaker has slammed the appointment, asserting she goes again to “the entity that employed her.”  

Zourabichvili, who was born in France and maintained a pro-Western stance throughout her time period, has been chosen for the 2025 Kissinger Fellowship, named after former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the McCain Institute introduced in an announcement on Monday.  

Commenting on the provide earlier this week, the speaker of the Georgian Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, drew parallels between Zourabichvili’s appointment and former President Mikhail Saakashvili’s previous educational tenure overseas.   

“Nearly 12 years in the past, an analogous gesture was prolonged to ..Saakashvili, at Tufts College,” he wrote on X on Tuesday. “Regardless of having pledged allegiance to Georgia alone, Saakashvili later grew to become a Ukrainian citizen and Zourabishvili too, finally, is prone to return to her native France.”  

Papuashvili concluded that neither had actually served Georgia, returning as a substitute “to the entity that employed them.”  

In December, Georgian MPs elected as president former Manchester Metropolis soccer participant Mikhail Kavelashvili from the Individuals’s Social gathering, which along with the Georgian Dream type the ruling coalition.  

Nevertheless, Zourabichvili refused to acknowledge Kavelashvili as her successor, claiming that the parliamentary election in October that introduced a convincing victory for Georgian Dream had been rigged.   

Regardless of failing to supply any proof of fraud, the pro-Western opposition protested for weeks after the vote, demanding a rerun of the election. They had been totally backed by Zourabichvili, who herself appeared among the many demonstrators. The 72-year-old additionally threatened to not go away the presidential palace in Tbilisi, however finally departed in late December.  

Georgia is a parliamentary republic through which the prime minister and authorities wield government energy, whereas the president’s place is ceremonial.  

The McCain Institute stated that in her presidency between 2018 and 2024 Zourabichvili “forcefully defended Georgia’s path to EU and NATO integration and supported democratic reform, famously vetoing the Georgian Dream authorities’s Kremlin-modeled ‘international agent regulation’ and standing in opposition to the social gathering’s autocratic flip.”  

In her new function, the previous Georgian president “will use her huge diplomatic, management, and policymaking expertise to push for brand spanking new elections and a democratic path ahead in her nation,” it stated.  

In Might, the parliament in Tbilisi overturned Zourabichvili’s veto and adopted laws that required NGOs, media retailers and people that get greater than 20% of their funding from overseas to register as international brokers and disclose their donors.   

The Georgian political opposition strongly criticized the invoice, labeling it a “Russian regulation” and accusing the ruling social gathering of basing it on laws enacted in Russia in 2012. The ruling social gathering, in the meantime, maintained that the regulation was impressed by the US Overseas Brokers Registration Act of 1938, emphasizing that the Georgian model is definitely much more lenient than its American counterpart.  

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze stated final month that the regulation had helped to avert a coup that had been deliberate in Georgia with using “international funding.”