Tbilisi, Jan 30: Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said in a televised briefing on Monday that he was resigning ahead of parliamentary elections due by October.Georgian media had earlier reported that Irakli Kobakhidze, chair of the ruling Georgian Dream party, would replace Garibashvili, who has served as prime minister since 2021.
Expectations of a government reshuffle increased after Bidzina Ivanishvili, the ruling partyâs founder, suddenly returned to politics as Georgian Dreamâs honorary chair in December 2023. He was rumored to be looking to sack Garibashvili ahead of the election as accusations of the prime ministerâs involvement in corruption mounted in the country.
Garibashvili succeeded Ivanishvili as prime minister after the latter resigned in November 2013.
Ivanishvili returned to politics in 2018 as Georgian Dreamâs chairman but retired in January 2021, shortly after securing his partyâs victory in the October 2020 parliamentary election. He pledged at the time that his departure from politics was final as he had âaccomplishedâ his mission.
Since then, however, Ivanishvili has been widely regarded as Georgiaâs informal ruler, calling the shots despite holding no official position in the party or government.
Georgia became an EU membership candidate country in November 2023, with the Commission setting nine benchmarks the country must meet in order to join, including holding free, fair and competitive elections.
Even as it pursues the countryâs EU membership, however, the Georgian Dream government has been criticized for its authoritarian tendencies, and even for appeasing Russian President Vladimir Putin. Last year it tried to enact a Putin-style law that would have required all organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to register as foreign agents; the bill was dropped after mass protests.
Opposition parties claim that Ivanishvili is actually holding Georgia back on its path to EU membership.