Who’s fighting for the presidency?

Both candidates are former ministers of foreign affairs that served under the Saakashvili government.

Zourabichvili is Bidzina Ivanishvili’s personal choice, and Grigol Vashadze is the personal choice of Mikheil Saakashvili. The confrontation between these two leaders makes the presidential election particularly tense and intriguing.

Vashadze and Zourabichvili have another thing in common: they both used the Russian card in their election campaign. Vashadze supporters say that Zourabichvili is the favourite of the Kremlin, while Zourabichvili supporters say that Vashadze is a KGB agent.

Salome Zourabichvili

Salome Zourabichvili is officially an independent candidate. However, she has received extensive support from the ruling Georgian Dream party, including administrative and financial aid.

Born in Paris, Zourabichvili is the granddaughter of political immigrants who fled from Georgia in 1921.

Zourabichvili served in the Frenchdiplomatic corps, and in 2003 was appointed the French ambassador to Georgia. In 2004 after the Rose Revolution took place in Georgia, ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili gave her Georgian citizenship and appointed her minister of foreign affairs in his government.

• Salome Zourabichvili: the ruling party’s first serious failure

Zourabichvili did not serve long under Saakashvili. In October 2005, she joined the opposition, but failed to head up a serious party. She left both politics and Georgia and came back only in 2012, after billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili entered politics. Throughout these years she openly supported Ivanishvili, though she did not become a member of the ruling Georgian Dream party.

Zourabichvili is a member of the Georgian parliament. While she officially entered parliament independently, she received strong support from Georgian Dream in becoming