Salome Zurabishvili

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Salome Zurabishvili (2018)

Salome Zurabishvili-Kaschia ( Georgian სალომე ზურაბიშვილი-კაშია French Salomé Zourabichvili ; born March 18, 1952 in Paris ) is a Georgian - French politician ( Georgiens Weg ) and the President of Georgia . The diplomat was Georgian Foreign Minister from March 2004 to October 2005. In March 2006 she initiated the establishment of an opposition party. In the shadow cabinet of the presidential candidate Levan Gatchetschiladze she was designated as prime minister. Supported by the ruling Georgian Dream party , she was elected as an independent candidate in November 2018 as the first woman to be President of Georgia.

life and career

Zurabishvili comes from a Georgian family who emigrated to France in 1921.

French diplomat

Zurabishvili graduated from the Institute of Political Science in Paris in 1972 and postgraduate studies with Zbigniew Brzeziński at Columbia University in New York in 1973 . In 1974 she entered the French diplomatic service and represented her country in the USA , Italy , Chad , the UN in New York, NATO in Brussels and the OSCE in Vienna . From 2001 to 2003 she was Head of the Department for International and Strategic Affairs at the French Secretary General for National Defense. In November 2003 she became the ambassador of France in Tbilisi .

Georgian Foreign Minister

During his visit to France on March 8, 2004, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili asked French President Jacques Chirac to release the diplomat for the post of Georgian Foreign Minister. Chirac agreed, and Zurabishvili took office in the same month and received a Georgian passport in addition to her French passport.

She wanted to set up the Georgian Foreign Ministry in a European style and prepare Georgia for accession to the European Union by 2008 at the latest . She was given a free hand by the president in selecting her employees and took tough measures against corruption in the visa and passport departments. In May 2005, in Moscow, she negotiated a withdrawal plan for the Georgian group of Russian forces in Transcaucasia by 2008.

The attempt to control the powerful ambassadors elected by parliament failed. She made enemies in the diplomatic missions and in the faction of the ruling party in parliament. As her intimate enemy, Parliament's President Nino Burdschanadze , who is said to have felt as the most important woman in the state by the foreign minister, was finally considered .

On October 17, 2005, Burjanadze called for Surabishvili to resign because she had allegedly submitted international treaties to parliament too late and had not shown her understanding. Two days later, Zurabishvili was dismissed from office. Georgia's Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli accused her of having dealt with parliament in an “unacceptable manner”. Zurabishvili, however, said she was bullied by members of the ruling party from day one in office . Clan politicians have deliberately laid mines to get them out of the way.

The dismissal caused a government crisis. The then Minister of State for Conflict Resolution Giorgi Chaindrawa publicly criticized the replacement as a “wrong step”. Zurabishvili is the "most successful foreign minister in Georgia" and all allegations against her were "incompetent and mostly wrong".

Opposition politician

In November 2005 she founded the organization Salome Zurabischwilis Public Movement , in which she gathered experts in various political fields. On March 11, 2006, she founded the Georgian Weg political party together with MP Gia Tortladse .

She describes her political position as center-right. She accuses President Saakashvili of having turned away from the Rose Revolution . The Georgian political system criticizes them as a de facto one-party system . However, Zurabishvili wants to distinguish herself from other opposition politicians in that she not only criticizes the government, but also presents her own concepts. On July 28, 2006, she was the only opposition politician to welcome a controversial police action by the Georgian government in Abkhazia and the establishment of the Abkhaz government-in-exile, which has previously resided in Tbilisi, in the Kodori Gorge . In 2007, she was positive about the proposal to establish a constitutional monarchy in Georgia .

With her party she joined the opposition alliance United National Council in September 2007 , which nominated the presidential candidate Levan Gatchetschiladze . Gatchechiladze intended to propose her to parliament as Georgian Prime Minister if he was elected. In November 2007, she supported the mass protests against the Georgian government in Tbilisi. Although Zurabishvili is very respected in Georgia, it has not been able to establish itself politically. In the city council elections in Tbilisi on October 5, 2006, only 2.77% of the party's voters cast their vote. In April 2006, 23.1% of Georgians said in an opinion poll published by the weekly newspaper Kwiris Palitra that they would elect Zurabishvili as president.

Salome Zurabishvili (2013)

Since 2008, Zurabishvili has increasingly turned to political publication . In her book La tragédie géorgienne , published in 2009, she settled accounts with President Saakashvili. His regime described it as "a parody of democracy". The president comes from the " Ancien Régime ", attended a KGB school, and was Crown Prince Eduard Shevardnadze for a long time . In politics he uses Stalinist power techniques. Immediately before the parliamentary elections in Georgia in 2012, she renewed her criticism of the president, calling him a “ despot ”.

Presidency

Zurabishvili won the first round of the 2018 presidential election in Georgia on October 28, 2018 with 38.6% of the votes, ahead of Grigol Vashadze (37.7%). In the runoff election in November of that year, she finally prevailed clearly against him with 59.6 to 40.4%. On December 16, 2018, Zurabishvili was sworn in as the new President of Georgia. In her inauguration speech, Zurabishvili called on neighboring Russia to comply with international law and announced that Georgia would continue to seek membership in the EU and NATO.

Awards

Zurabishvili is a member of the French Legion of Honor and was awarded the National Order of Merit of the French Republic, the Ordre national du mérite .

Personal

Zurabishvili speaks French , Georgian , English , Italian , German and Russian . She was married to the Georgian journalist and former Soviet dissident Janry Kaschia for the second time and has two children from her first marriage.

Her father Levan was President of the Association of Georgians in France . Surabishvili's great-grandfather was the national liberal politician Niko Nikoladze , who was a fellow campaigner of the Georgian national poet Ilia Chavchavadze . Her cousin is the French historian Hélène Carrère d'Encausse . Zurabishvili first visited Georgia in 1986.

Fonts

Web links

Commons : Salome Zurabishvili  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Lion's Child: The First President of Georgia Salome Zurabishvili. Heinrich Böll Foundation, accessed on October 24, 2019 .
  2. ^ Opposition in Georgia supports the proposal to establish a monarchy . In: Georgia News, October 8, 2007
  3. ^ Salomé Zourabichvili: En finir avec le despostisme de Mikhaïl Saakachvili en Géorgie . In: Le Monde , September 3, 2012
  4. ↑ Election of the president: In Georgia a runoff is necessary . ZDF, October 29, 2018.
  5. ↑ Georgia gets a president. In: faz.net , November 29, 2018.
  6. ^ Taking office in Georgia with criticism of Moscow. Deutsche Welle, December 16, 2018, accessed December 17, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Zurabishvili, Salome
ALTERNATIVE NAMES სალომე ზურაბიშვილი (Georgian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French diplomat and Georgian politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris , France