The speaker of the parliament of Georgia said today that the ruling party’s deputies are starting procedures for the removal of the country’s pro-Western president ahead of parliamentary elections on October 26, a year after a previous attempt to oust him failed.

During a press conference, Salva Papauashvili, stated that the categories against the president Salome Zourabisvili related to overseas visits that he said were not approved by the government, the same charges I had made in the previous impeachment attempt last year.

The ruling Georgian Dream party and its allies currently do not have enough votes in parliament to impeach Zurabishvili, and Papuashvili said he hoped the decision would be passed after elections by a new parliament.

Although elected in 2018 with the backing of Georgian Dream, Zourabishvili, whose powers are largely ceremonial, has since become an enemy of its powerful founder, billionaire former prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili.

In recent weeks, Zurabishvili has been trying to intercede for her conclusion of agreements between the divided and fragmented opposition parties of Georgia, aiming to the Georgian Dream is defeated at the polls.

A Paris-born, French-born and Georgian-born former diplomat, Zourabishvili met last week with the leaders of France, Germany and Poland, as well as senior European Union officials during a trip to Europe.

The EU said last week it was suspending all high-level contacts with the Georgian government because of its “anti-Western and anti-European narrative”.

Although Georgia has been broadly pro-Western since its independence from Moscow in 1991, its foreign and domestic critics have accused the Georgian Dream of seeking to sabotage Tbilisi’s long-held goals of EU and NATO membership and push the country to Russia.

The Georgian Dream says it wants Georgia to join the EU and NATO while avoiding conflict with Russia.

According to opinion polls, Georgian Dream remains the country’s most popular party, although it has lost ground since 2020, when it won almost 50% of the vote and a narrow parliamentary majority.