Passions of the Presidential Election

Georgians are sensitive towards their political future and remain sincerely concerned about who their future president will be over the next five years.

Although it is obvious that the new president, whoever it will be, will lack many advantages, rights and powers that were widely enjoyed by President Mikheil Saakashvili, here in Georgia the idea is domineering that the president is the real head of the state and the master of the political landscape in Georgia. As a result, Georgians attribute too much attention to the question of who the president will be. Various research, polling and ratings are being conducted on different levels. Some of them are far from professional, although all of them claim their objectivity, fairness, and accuracy.

The results of such activities are present to the general public and different conclusions are made. The main tendency is that the major battle will be for second place in the first round of the upcoming elections. Here it should be mentioned that many observers agree that the first round of the presidential elections will not manage to identify the winner. However, it will definitely reveal the name of the leaders of the race.

Everybody agrees with the idea that the presidential candidate of the Georgian Dream coalition, Giorgi Margvelashvili, will be the front-runner after the first round. However, presumably, he will not gain the winning 51% of the votes.

So the major interest is concentrated around the question of who will be the second challenger in the competition. Through the different sources, major contestants for second place are the current leader of the oppositional United National Movement (UNM), Davit Bakradze and the former chairperson of the Parliament, Nino Burjanadze.

However, the leaders of the Georgian Dream coalition challenge these possible developments claiming with confidence that Margvelashvili will win the presidency even in the first round of the election.

So the major intrigue is whether Margvelashvili will be able to accumulate enough votes to secure his victory in the first round or will the second round become necessary.

Some analysts think that even if the second round becomes necessary, Margvelashvili will still become the winner in the race; because the votes from the other candidates will definitely go to him.

The major “fault” of the Georgian Dream candidate is the fact that he is not that charismatic like other presidential predecessors in Georgia – Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Eduard Shevardnadze and Mikheil Saakashvili.

We ask the question here: is this a really necessary feature for the future president or maybe this will be exactly the disadvantage… Because what Georgia needs first of all is to establish a system of governance where all the powers are equally distributed harmoniously between the various branches of the government.