Former FM Salome Zourabichvili to run for president
By Nazrin Gadimova
Georgia's former Foreign Minister Salome Zourabichvili will run for presidency. Zourabichvili said on July 18 that an application for registration as a presidential candidate will be filed to the central election body in the near future.
"Our country needs a president of a new type. I want to use my experience, my background and my knowledge for the benefit of the country right now, because I think the country needs it," she said.
Zourabichvili said there are no legal barriers that may prevent her from running for the top post.
Earlier she said she was ready to renounce dual citizenship if elected.
Zourabichvili says that it is necessary for Georgia to move from what she termed as a post-totalitarian regime to democracy and that the October elections will be crucial in this process.
According to Zourabichvili, if Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili leaves politics after the presidential elections, early parliamentary elections will be inevitable.
The 2013 poll will be the 6th presidential election after the country's declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The last one, held on January 5, 2008, resulted in the election of Mikheil Saakashvili for his second and final presidential term.
Salome Zourabichvili is a French-born Georgian politician, who served as foreign minister and a diplomat in the French service from 2004 to 2005. President Mikheil Saakashvili appointed her as Foreign Minister in his new government in 2004, but she was reportedly dismissed by Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli after a series of disputes with members of parliament in October 2005.
In January 2006 she established a new political party, Georgia's Way, in Tbilisi.
In addition to the Georgian citizenship, Zourabichvili is a citizen of France.