TBILISI: Georgia’s foreign minister quit yesterday and one of six parties in the ruling coalition pulled out, depriving it of a parliamentary majority in a rift over the pace of integration with the West.
Foreign Minister Maya Panjikidze, who cited threats to Georgia’s pro-Western course, and a junior minister resigned following the dismissal of the former Soviet republic’s pro-Western defence minister by Prime Minister Irakly Garibashvili.
Garibashvili said he remained committed to closer ties with the West. But the defection of the Free Democrats, led by sacked minister Irakly Alasania, from the Georgian Dream coalition increases political instability in the country of 4.5 million crossed by pipelines that carry Caspian oil and gas from Azerbaijan to Europe.
“We have left the coalition,” Alasania declared after his party met other leaders of the coalition to discuss the crisis. The Free Democrats have 10 of the coalition’s 83 seats in the 150-seat assembly. The coalition will now need the backing of independent deputies for a majority but a confidence vote must be called only if seven or more of the 20 cabinet members are replaced.
The tensions in the coalition highlight Georgia’s difficulties trying to pursue its goals of joining NATO and the European Union without antagonising its former Soviet overlord Moscow, with which it fought a five-day war in 2008. Alasania had irked Garibashvili by saying the arrests of several officials in his ministry were politically motivated.
REUTERS
