Far-Right Soccer Star Is Tapped for Presidency of Georgia

Georgia’s governing lawmakers handed the presidency to a former soccer star turned far-right politician on Saturday, setting up a standoff with the sitting president and deepening the country’s political turmoil after weeks of protests and a disputed parliamentary election.

Mikheil Kavelashvili, 53, a former striker for the Manchester City football team, was the sole candidate for the post, and the first to be chosen by an electoral college that replaced direct presidential elections seven years ago.

A coalition of opposition parties boycotted the vote, because they say the parliamentary elections in late October were marred by allegations of vote buying, intimidation and violence. But Mr. Kavelashvili was backed by the conservative Georgian Dream party, which has held a majority in Parliament for over a decade and steered the small Caucasus nation away from the European Union and closer to Russia and China.

The vote sets up a standoff between Mr. Kavelashvili, who is to assume office in 15 days, and the outgoing president, Salome Zourabichvili, who has sided with the opposition and vowed to stay in office until new elections are held. In a post on X, she called the result a “mockery of democracy,” comparing it to the way Georgia’s leaders were chosen when the country was part of the Soviet Union.

It is unclear what she could do to prevent Ms. Kavelashvili from taking his seat. On Nov. 30, she insisted that “there will be no inauguration and my mandate continues.” But on Dec. 3, Georgia’s constitutional court rejected a challenge to the elections filed by Ms. Zourabichvili and opposition groups.

Ms. Zourabichvili, who was elected by Georgia’s final popular vote for president, is pro-Western, while Mr. Kavelashvili espouses strongly anti-Western views. He claimed several times this year that Western intelligence agencies were conspiring to push Georgia into conflict with Moscow, which ruled Georgia as part of the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union, until 1991.