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New Georgian president sworn in; predecessor says he is not legitimate leader
By Gleb Stolyarov and Felix Light
TBILISI (Reuters) -Mikheil Kavelashvili, a hardline critic of the West, was sworn in as president of Georgia on Sunday amid a political crisis after the government froze European Union application talks in a move that sparked major protests.
Outgoing President Salome Zourabichvili, a pro-EU opponent of the ruling party, said in a defiant speech to supporters outside the presidential palace that she was leaving the residence, but that Kavelashvili had no legitimacy as president, which is a mostly ceremonial position.
She said: “I will come out of here and be with you.”
“I am taking legitimacy with me, I am taking the flag with me, I am taking your trust with me,” she added, before walking out of the palace to mingle with her supporters.
Zourabichvili says that Kavelashvili was not duly picked, as the lawmakers who chose him were elected in an October parliamentary election that she says was marked by fraud. Georgia’s opposition parties support her.
The Georgian Dream ruling party and the country’s election commission say that the October election was free and fair. The ruling party says Kavelashvili is the duly elected president.
The presidential standoff is seen as a watershed moment in Georgia, a mountainous country of 3.7 million that had until recently been regarded as among the most democratic and pro-Western of the former Soviet states.
Kavelashvili is a loyalist of Bidzina Ivanishvili, a reclusive billionaire ex-prime minister who is widely seen as Georgia’s de facto leader.
On Friday, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Ivanishvili, saying he was spearheading Georgia’s current anti-Western and pro-Russian turn.
PROTESTERS HOLD UP RED CARDS
Kavelashvili, a former professional soccer player who briefly played as a striker for Manchester City, has repeatedly accused Western intelligence agencies of plotting to drive Georgia into war with neighbouring Russia.
“The Georgian people have always understood that peace is the main prerequisite for survival and development,” he said after being sworn in on Sunday.
Protesters outside parliament held up red cards in a mocking reference to Kavelashvili’s athletic career. Local media reported that six people were briefly detained amid scuffles with the police.
“Right now, this so-called government is telling us that they inaugurated the new president, but there is no new president for us, for Georgian people who are standing here day and night,” protester Mariam Japaridze told Reuters.
“We have only one legitimate president, and this is Salome Zourabichvili,” she said.
Georgian Dream got almost 54% of the vote in October’s election, according to official results.
Local and international election monitors have said the vote was marked by violations that could have affected the results. Western countries have called for an investigation.
Zourabichvili is backed by the country’s four main pro-EU opposition parties, which have boycotted parliament since the election. They say she will remain the legitimate president until fresh elections are held.
The confrontation comes amid a month of protests sparked by Georgian Dream’s suspension of EU accession talks until 2028, abruptly halting a longstanding national goal of joining the bloc that is written into the country’s constitution.
The move touched off widespread anger among Georgians, who polls show are firmly pro-EU, and prompted a police crackdown, with over 400 people, including senior opposition leaders, detained.
Zourabichvili has accused Georgian Dream of deliberately sinking Georgia’s EU hopes and instead moving towards Russia, from which Georgia gained independence in 1991.
Opposition supporters say that under Zourabichvili, who was elected with Georgian Dream’s support in 2018 before breaking with the party in recent years, the presidency was the only institution in the country not ultimately under the control of ruling party founder Ivanishvili.
They say that with the installation of Kavelashvili, Ivanishvili will have total control over Georgia.
(Reuters) – The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation gave a fresh deadline of Feb. 10 to BlackRock (NYSE:) to resolve an issue regarding oversight into the firm’s stock in banks, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday, citing three people with knowledge of the matter.
By Steven Scheer
JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel plans to use tax revenue it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority to pay the PA’s nearly 2 billion ($544 million) debt to state-run Israel Electric Co (IEC), Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday.
Israel collects tax on goods that pass through Israel into the occupied West Bank on behalf of the PA and transfers the revenue to Ramallah under a longstanding arrangement between the two sides.
Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, triggered the war in Gaza, Smotrich has withheld sums totalling 800 million shekels earmarked for administration expenses in Gaza.
Those frozen funds are held in Norway and, he said at Sunday’s cabinet meeting, would instead be used to pay debt owed to the IEC of 1.9 billion shekels.
“The procedure was implemented after several anti-Israeli actions and included Norway’s unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state,” Smotrich told cabinet ministers.
“The PA’s debt to IEC resulted in high loans and interest rates, as well as damage to IEC’s credit, which were ultimately rolled over to the citizens of Israel.”
The Palestinian Finance Ministry said it had agreed for Norway to release a portion of funds from an account held since last January with 1.5 billion shekels, calling money in the account “a punitive measure linked to the government’s financial support for Gaza”.
The ministry said as part of the deal, 767 million shekels of the Norwegian-held funds will pay Israeli fuel companies for weekly fuel purchases over the coming months. A similar amount will be used to settle electricity-related debts owed by Palestinian distribution companies to IEC.
Smotrich has been opposed to sending funds to the PA, which uses the money to pay public sector wages. He accuses the PA of supporting the Oct. 7 attack in Israel led by the Islamist movement Hamas, which controlled Gaza. The PA is currently paying 50-60% of salaries.
Israel also deducts funds equal to the total amount of so-called martyr payments, which the PA pays to families of militants and civilians killed or imprisoned by Israeli authorities.
The Palestinian finance ministry said 2.1 billion shekels remain withheld by Israel, bringing the total withheld funds to over 3.6 billion shekels as of 2024.
Israel, it said, began deducting an average of 275 million shekels monthly from its tax revenues in October 2023, equivalent to the government’s monthly allocations for Gaza.
“This has exacerbated the financial crisis, as the government continues to transfer these allocations directly to the accounts of public servants in Gaza,” the ministry said.
It added it was working with international partners to secure the release of these funds as soon as possible.
($1 = 3.6763 shekels)
BUCHAREST (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Romanians angered by the cancellation of a presidential election marched through Bucharest on Sunday to demand that the ballot should go ahead and that outgoing centrist President Klaus Iohannis should resign.
In a move that polarised voters, Romania’s top court voided the presidential election on Dec. 6, two days before the second round.
The cancellation came after state documents showed frontrunner Calin Georgescu, a critic of NATO, had benefited from an unfair social media campaign likely to have been orchestrated by Russia, accusations Moscow has denied.
The court ordered that the election be re-run in its entirety. The pro-European coalition government has yet to approve a calendar for the election, although party leaders agreed to hold the two rounds on May 4 and May 18.
Iohannis, whose term expired on Dec. 21, will stay on until his successor is elected.
On Sunday, tens of thousands of protesters, including left-wingers and those angered by the way the way the election was cancelled, joined the protest organised by the opposition hard-right Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR), Romania’s second-largest party.
“We ask for a return to democracy by resuming the election with the second round,” AUR leader George Simion told reporters.
Organizers said 100,000 people were at the protest, but riot police along the march estimated the numbers at around 20,000. Protesters waved flags and shouted “Freedom” and “Bring back the second round.”
“Our right to vote was broken,” said Bogdan Danila, a 43-year-old truck driver. “In addition, Iohannis was in power for ten years and did nothing for the people, while parties betrayed us, they are all corrupt. We want something else.”
Some protesters carried portraits of Georgescu or Christian Orthodox icons while street vendors sold flags and vuvuzelas.
“Authorities must say why they cancelled the election, we want to see the evidence,” said Cornelia, 57, an economist wrapped in a Romanian flag who declined to give her last name.
“At this rate we won’t be voting anymore, they will impose a leader like in the old days.”
It remains unclear whether Georgescu, who opposes Romanian support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, will be allowed to run for president again.
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