The election of the Salome Zurabishvili as a President of Georgia in the second round of elections marked her remarkable victory, establishing the ruling party candidate and former Georgian foreign minister as the first female head of state. The 66-year-old took 59.6 per cent of Wednesday's vote after 99 per cent of ballots had been counted, the country's election commission said early Thursday, while her rival, Grigol Vashadze, also a former foreign minister, took 40.4 per cent. With all votes counted, the French-born ex-diplomat had taken 59.52 percent of the vote in Wednesday’s second round run-off, the election commission said.Her rival Grigol Vashadze, from an alliance of 11 opposition parties led by exiled ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM), won 40.48 percent. The election was seen as a test of Georgia’s democratic credentials as the Caucasus nation seeks European Union and NATO membership. The election was seen as a test of Georgia’s democratic credentials as the Caucasus nation seeks European Union and NATO membership.It was also a trial run for more important parliamentary elections in 2020, when the ruling Georgian Dream party is set to face off against a range of opposition parties. Georgian Dream — the creation of billionaire tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili who many see as the country’s de facto ruler — backed Zurabishvili in the presidential vote.Ivanishvili’s great rival, the flamboyant ex-president Saakashvili, claimed “mass electoral fraud” even before official results were released.“The oligarch has stamped out Georgian democracy and the institutions of elections,” he said on the pro-opposition Rustavi-2 television channel, referring to Ivanishvili. International observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said in a report after the vote that the “election was competitive and candidates were able to campaign freely, however one side enjoyed an undue advantage,” due to the misuse of administrative resources. Her career in France’s foreign service culminated in a posting to Tbilisi, where then-president Saakashvili appointed her foreign minister.
Voters in Georgia elect Salome Zurabishvili as president. She will be the first woman elected to hold the position when she assumes office on 16 December 2018.