A little-known ally of billionaire Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili won a landslide victory in Georgia’s presidential election yesterday, cementing the ruling coalition’s grip on power after Mikheil Saakashvili’s 10-year rule.
Georgy Margvelashvili’s triumph concentrates power and will make policy-making easier in the former Soviet republic because Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream coalition now controls both the presidency and the government for the first time.
Exit polls showed the margin of victory was so large that the candidate from Saakashvili’s party, David Bakradze, conceded victory to Margvelashvili even before the official count began.
Georgian Dream supporters released dozens of balloons in the coalition’s blue and white colours outside its headquarters in the capital Tbilisi, sounded car horns in the packed streets and chanted: “Long live Georgy”.
“We have shown the world how free people make a free choice,” Margvelashvili, a 44-year-old former vice premier with a doctorate in philosophy, told cheering supporters.
He wrapped his arm around the shoulders of Ivanishvili, who plucked him out of academia when Georgian Dream ousted Saakashvili’s government at the polls a year ago, and praised him as the “biggest authority” in the South Caucasus country.
Margvelashvili had needed one vote over 50 per cent of the ballots cast to secure victory without a run-off. GfK, a European market research group, put him on 66.1 per cent and ACT, a Georgian research group, estimated he would win 68 per cent.
But the election is likely to provide only a brief respite from political uncertainty in the country of 4.5 million which is strategically important for both Russia and Europe, which gets Caspian gas and oil via pipelines that go through Georgia.
Ivanishvili, Georgian Dream’s founder and the most powerful and richest man in Georgia with an estimated fortune of $5.3 billion, says he will step aside soon because his job will be complete when his 45-year-old rival leaves the presidency. He has not said who will be the next prime minister – the most important job in Georgia under constitutional changes that are about to go into affect – or how he might continue to bring influence to bear on the coalition from the sidelines.
The EU is also worried by the arrest of several former ministers and other officials, including a former prime minister, and that Saakashvili could suffer the same fate. Georgians are speculating that Saakashvili might soon leave the country to avoid prosecution.
He went on TV soon after voting ended to say he was worried about Georgia’s immediate future. But, echoing his decision to quickly concede victory to Georgian Dream after last year’s parliamentary election to ease tension, he sought calm.
Margvelashvili’s main foreign policy goal is to pursue close ties with both the West and Russia, a balance that has long eluded Georgia.