Parliament Speaker: Zourabichvili Will Receive at least 200,000 More Votes
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Wednesday, November 28
Georgian Parliament Speaker Irakli Kobakhidze believes that the Georgian Dream endorsed presidential candidate Salome Zourabichvili will receive at least 200,000 more votes than her opponent from the United National Movement opposition Grigol Vashadze in today’s presidential election runoff.
"We think we will convincingly win the elections. Our task is to get at least 200 thousand votes more than our opponent. It is realistic and we work on it," said Kobakhidze.
He claims that the situation is very positive and it was proved by the Georgian Dream internal survey.
"200 thousand votes mean about 56% and we think that this is a realistic goal," said Kobakhidze.
In the first round of elections on 28 October Zourabichvili received 0.9 percent more votes than Vashadze.
In total, she received 38 percent of votes, while the exit poll conducted by the company hired by the ruling party said that Zourabichvili should have received more than 51 percent of votes and won the race in its first round.
After the elections, the ruling party stated that they “received a message from people” and announced plans for several socio-economic initiatives.
However, several members of the Georgian Dream coalition, Kakha Kaladze among them, hinted that the failure could have been related to the fact that the ruling party did not name its own candidate and supported an independent candidate instead.
The election posters printed after the first round depicted the founder of the Georgian Dream party Bidzina Ivanishvili, Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze, Parliament Speaker Irakli Kobakhidze instead of Zourabichvili.
Political expert Gia Khukhashvili believes that Zourabichvili’s failure in the first round took place because of the failure of the Georgian Dream to run the country as it had promised.
He says that if Ivanishvili and his party ignore the message, they will be in trouble in the 2020 parliamentary elections.
