Talking Europe hosts Georgia’s fifth president, who maintains that she is still the legitimate holder of that post, despite the swearing-in of a new president on December 29th. Salomé Zourabichvili explains why she believes that the inauguration of Mikheil Kavelashvili was illegitimate, and why Georgia is facing such a stark choice of either going back into the Kremlin’s orbit or pursuing its western path and accession process to join the European Union.

Insisting that Mr. Kavelashvili does not have a popular mandate, Zourabichvili states, “I was elected by the people, unlike this president. He was elected by a college that is composed by the parliament and by other institutions which are all controlled by (ruling party) Georgian Dream. So it’s basically a president elected by one party. And my mandate does not stop at a specific date. The constitution says my mandate continues until a new president is elected. That means a legitimate president. So I’m waiting. As soon as we have new elections and the new president is elected, I’m happy to defer.”

We discuss the protest movement that was sparked by parliamentary elections in October which most EU countries judged to be neither free nor fair – and by Georgian Dream’s decision to suspend the EU membership process. “The most important demand is the return to the European path,” Zourabichvili affirms. “That’s what people on the streets have been demanding every day for practically 60 days now. Because what started this massive protest was not just the stealing of the elections. It was also the fact that the prime minister and the parliament – without a mandate from the population – went against the will of the population and said that we will stop our path towards Europe.”

We turn to western sanctions on Georgian officials deemed responsible for the police crackdown on protesters. While the EU has taken some targeted measures, broader sanctions have been blocked by Hungary and Slovakia – whose leaders are aligned with Georgian Dream.

“There have been American sanctions on (influential oligarch) Bidzina Ivanishvili, and we can already feel the nervousness of that elite about those sanctions, because American sanctions are what really counts,” Zourabichvili says. “But there is a real problem for the European Union, which has the ambition to have a real foreign policy in that part of the world – in the Caucasus, where there is also Armenia waiting to turn towards Europe. If the EU doesn’t have instruments, or if its instruments are blocked by one veto, then it will not be able to become a real player.”

She continues by outlining the geopolitical interests that are at stake:

“We have huge infrastructure projects that are waiting on the Black Sea. If China comes into the Black Sea port of Anaklia, as the ruling party in Georgia wants – it’s negotiating behind closed doors with China, in fact – then it’s Europe’s foreign policy that is challenged. The same if the ruling party can give China the second airport in Tbilisi.”

Zourabichvili attended President Donald Trump’s inauguration, and talked to prominent Republicans there. She says that Trump likely will not be guided only by sympathy for populist leaders and governments around the world.

“I think Trump is also a realist,” she says. “The main message that I heard at his inauguration was that he’s talking about a strong America. Well, how is America strong if a small country of 3.7 million people can suddenly turn away from the West, abandon the strategic partnership with the United States, and turn to China and Russia? And what does strong America do if the Black Sea is closed to the American fleet? So there is a whole strategic, real world that Trump has to confront, beyond sympathies for some ideologies.”

Programme prepared by Oihana Almandoz, Perrine Desplats and Isabelle Romero