Georgia’s ruling party, which has raised the ire of the United States and European Union with moves seen as bringing the Caucasus nation closer to Russia, has revived its bid to impeach pro-West President Salome Zurabishvili weeks before a general election.
Zurabishvili's powers are limited under the constitution, but Georgian Dream sees her moves to unite opposition forces as an obstacle to its bid to dominate the vote.
Parliamentary speaker Shalva Papuashvili told a news conference on October 7 that the party is renewing its impeachment attempt as Zurabishvili recently violated the constitution governing her office by making official visits to Brussels, France, and Germany without the consent of the prime minister.
Papuashvili added that if the Constitutional Court finds that Zurabishvili has violated the law, the new parliament will remove her from office. Georgian Dream currently doesn’t have the necessary number of votes to remove the president.
The office of the president has not commented on the resurfacing of the impeachment issue.
Zurabishvili has had a dramatic falling out with the governing Georgian Dream party since it backed her candidacy for president in 2018, culminating in an embarrassing squabble over her right to represent Georgia abroad and then an ultimately failed impeachment in 2023.
She clashed with Georgian Dream by refusing to sign a "foreign influence" bill that Western governments and many Georgians liken to Russia's "foreign agent" law used by the Kremlin to clamp down on dissent with broad discretion, and a bill approved by parliament last month that rights groups and many opposition politicians say drastically curbs the rights of the country's LGBT community.
When she vetoed the foreign agent bill in mid-May, Zurabishvili called it "a Russian law in essence and spirit, which contradicts our constitution and all European standards" and "an obstacle on our European path."
Georgian Dream and its alliance with the Democratic Georgia party hold 84 of the parliament's 150 seats. Lawmakers voted 84-4 to override Zurabishvili's veto in late May.
In response to parliament's approval of the law curbing LGBT rights, Washington on September 16 introduced sanctions on more than 60 Georgians, including two members of the government, who it said had "undermined" democracy and human rights in the country, prompting Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze to warn that Tbilisi might revise ties with the United States.
The European Union, meanwhile, reacted to the bill by pausing EU accession negotiations.
Georgian Dream has insisted it remains committed to joining Western institutions and the law was only meant to increase transparency on NGO funding.
Georgia's civil society has for years sought to move the country away from the influence of Russia, which still maintains thousands of troops in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two breakaway Georgian regions that Moscow recognized as independent states following a five-day war with Tbilisi in 2008.