New mayor plans close relationship with Sakrebulo
By Tea Mariamidze
Tuesday, July 15
Davit Narmania, the newly elected Tbilisi mayor, is planning a close relationship and partnership with the new staff of the Tbilisi Sakrebulo, or City Council.
There was quite a strained situation between the Sakrebulo and the Mayor’s Office when the Georgian Dream ascended to power following the 2012 parliamentary elections. The Sakrebulo was against the confirmation of the budget changes and some other related issues, which were presented by the Mayor’s Office. After the elections, Irakli Shikhiashvili, the former chief of the Sakrebulo, claimed that the Mayor’s Office was misusing funds.
Now the Sakrebulo has a new chairperson, Gia Alibegashvili, and Tbilisi has a new Mayor, Davit Narmania.
“The Sakrebulo is the main policy-making body of the capital and the solutions made by the body should be executed by the Mayor’s Office,” Narmania said, stressing that the Mayor’s office will have its special representative in the Sakrebulo.
Narmania also claims that through the elections and under the new government, democratic processes have been promoted in the country. According to him, an article that envisages the removal of the elected mayor through the Sakrebulo’s verdict would be cut.
Media analyst Ia Antadze shares the vision that the elections under the new government were better and more transparent and fair than those conducted under the previous leadership.
“Despite the fact that the coalition managed to win everywhere and we practically have a single party system like to in former periods, the elections were held in a better and more improved election environment than those under the United National Movement,” Antadze said.
Fellow analyst and the Editor-in-Chief of Rezonansi newspaper Lasha Tughushi believes that the elections displayed public discontent towards the current situation in the country. “People and the country require more pluralism in the state bodies,” Tughushi said.
