Saakashvili’s party rejects call to quit

Saakashvili’s party rejects call to quit

Tbilisi: Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s ruling party on Wednesday rejected calls from the opposition for him to resign after a shock defeat in hard-fought parliamentary elections.

“Speaking about snap presidential polls today shows disrespect to the Georgian people and violates the constitution,” the outgoing chairman of parliament from the ruling party, David Bakradze, told a news conference.

Saakashvili conceded defeat in Monday’s vote and promised to help billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream coalition form the next government.

But Ivanishvili, who wants to become prime minister and needs the president’s formal nomination to achieve this, called on Saakashvili to resign.

Despite his party’s defeat, Saakashvili is due to remain in office for another year until his two-term presidency ends.

Bakradze said he hoped the call for Saakashvili’s resignation was “just an isolated incident amid euphoria caused by electoral victory” and would not lead to “crisis and confrontation”.

He said Saakashvili’s concession of defeat as well as the conduct of the polls, which drew qualified praise from international election observers, showed how far Georgia had progressed under the party’s nine-year rule.

“These elections have made it clear that Georgian democracy succeeded,” Bakradze said.

Meanwhile, Russia hopes that the victory of Georgia’s opposition in parliamentary elections will help normalise Tbilisi’s fraught relations with Moscow, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

“Clearly Georgian society voted for change,” spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement. “We hope that in the end it will let Georgia move to a normalisation and establishment of constructive and respectful relations with their neighbours. Russia would welcome this development.”

Diplomatic relations between former post-Soviet allies were cut following a brief Russia-Georgia war in 2008 which ended with Moscow’s recognition of two breakaway provinces of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Since then, there has been no presence of Russian diplomats in Tbilisi, and regular spy scandals result in heated exchanges between the foreign ministries.

Flights between Moscow and Tbilisi resumed only in 2010 following the war, and this year President Mikhail Saakashvili abolished Georgian visa requirements for Russian citizens in a unilateral move.

However both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said they will never meet Saakashvili for official talks, calling him a criminal.