The President Confirms the PM’s Nominee
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Monday, June 18
(TBILISI) - The President of Georgia Giorgi Margvelashvili officially confirmed the nomination of Mamuka Bakhtadze for the country’s prime minister’s post on June 16. However, Margvelashvili had offered the founder of the Georgian Dream ruling party Bidzina Ivanishvili to occupy the chair.
The president of Georgia has the right to reject a candidate named by the parliamentary majority, However, he let the parliament, with its 116 members of the Georgian Dream out of total 150, to vote for the new PM and the Cabinet of 14 Ministers.
In his previous statement Margvelashvili called the government reshuffle a “masquerade” and stated that Ivanishvili, “who is running the country,” should have taken the prime minister’s post, to end his management of current political agenda from backstage.
Mamuka Bakhtadze, 36, was nominated by the Georgian Dream ruling party as a candidate for the office of prime minister after the former PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili resigned due to disagreements on “fundamental issues” with the ruling party and its head Ivanishvili on June 13.
Bakhtadze has seven days to form a new government and present it to the parliament. If the parliament approves Bakhtadze and his choice of ministers and their action plan, the new government will set to work.
Between 2005 and 2006 Bakhtadze served as the project manager of the Georgian Railway.
In 2010-2012 he was the director general of Georgia’s International Energy Corporation.
In 2013- 2017, before taking the finance minister’s post, he served as the director general of Georgian Railway.
Bakhtadze holds a doctoral degree in technical sciences and also a master’s degree in business administration from the INSEAD Business School in France.
The opposition believes that the new PM will be a “complete failure” as under his leadership the progress of the Georgian Railway “was suspended.”
