TBILISI, July 31 – The leadership struggle in Georgia’s largest opposition party continues as United National Movement chair Tina Bokuchava questioned why a key party meeting was held while she was away from Tbilisi.
The United National Movement’s political council met on Thursday, July 30, amid what party officials described as heated internal debate. It agreed to convene roughly 250 to 300 delegates on August 5 and appointed a seven-member group to organise the congress.
The congress is expected to approve a temporary leadership system lasting up to six months. Under the plan, a collegial body of seven or nine members would run the party alongside an external Reform Council, which television presenter Nanuka Zhorzholiani is expected to lead.
UNM officials say the reform is intended to make the party more connected to ordinary voters and financially independent.
The temporary body would have a chair who would formally represent the party and carry the title of party chairman until a wider leadership election is held.
The political council meeting took place without Bokuchava, whose two-year term as chair expired on July 8. She later said she had informed the party’s secretary general two or three weeks earlier that she would be outside Tbilisi with her family.
Bokuchava said the organisers knew she would be absent and questioned why they moved quickly to hold both the political council meeting and the congress.
Party officials responded that the likely timing had been publicly discussed in advance and that many members had travelled from the regions specifically for the meeting. Irakli Pavlenishvili said Bokuchava remained one of the party’s important leaders and that her attendance would have been welcome.
The leadership contest remains open. Former president and UNM founder Mikheil Saakashvili has backed Zhorzholiani as his preferred candidate. Party official Ana Tsitlidze has also said she may run, while Bokuchava has not yet said whether she will seek another term.
Petre Tsiskarishvili, another senior UNM figure, said delegates would decide the outcome if Zhorzholiani entered the race.
