—As South Korea lawmakers vote to impeach president Yoon Suk Yeol
IPNEWS: It seems that English Football Club Manchester City, has taken the world by surprised after two of its former players have now matriculated from football to politics by being elected Presidents for their respective countries.
Former Manchester City football star George Weah was elected as Liberia’s president 2017. Weah in run-off election won his opponent Joseph Boakai now current president with more than 60% of the vote.
Mr Weah’s victory led him to succeed Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female president, marking a significant step to Liberia’s first democratic handover in decades.
“My fellow Liberians, I deeply feel the emotion of all the nation,” Mr Weah wrote on X after the results were announced. “I measure the importance and the responsibility of the immense task which I embrace today. Change is on.”
On 1 August 2000, George Weah officially left Milan, and signed for than newly promoted Premier League side Manchester City on a free transfer on a two-year contract worth £30,000 a week, declining the offer of a £1 million pay-off from Milan.
Now, another Manchester City former footballer, Georgian ex-footballer turned far-right politician Mikheil Kavelashvili on Saturday was voted Tbilisi’s next figurehead president Saturday in an election process denounced as “illegitimate” by the current pro-EU leader.
Picked by the governing Georgian Dream party as a loyalist, the former forward for English Premier League champions Manchester City is known for his expletive-laden parliament speeches and tirades against government critics and LGBTQ people.
He was voted into the role by an electoral college controlled by Georgian Dream after the party abolished the use of popular votes to elect the president under controversial constitutional changes passed in 2017.
Kavelashvili was the only candidate and is set to be inaugurated on December 29, amid ongoing social upheaval as thousands of anti-government protesters have flooded Tbilisi for weeks, furious at Georgian Dream for shelving EU accession talks.
Protesters have described Kavelashvili as a “puppet” of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgian Dream’s founder, who in turn has called him “the embodiment of a Georgian man”.
Sporting a moustache and combed-back hair, his comments on LGBTQ people have raised alarm, as has Georgian Dream’s adoption of Kremlin-style laws curbing their rights.
The ex-footballer slammed the West for wanting “as many people as possible (to be) neutral and tolerant towards the LGBTQ ideology, which supposedly defends the weak but is, in fact, an act against humanity”.
– Football roots –
Born in Georgia’s tiny southwestern town of Bolnisi in 1971, Kavelashvili began his career as a professional footballer in the 1980s, playing for clubs in Georgia and Russia and becoming a striker for his country’s national team.
The 53-year-old played for Manchester City from 1995 to 1997, scoring on his debut against bitter crosstown rivals Manchester United.
He then joined Swiss club Grasshoppers, where he spent most of his time on the bench, before stints elsewhere in Switzerland at Zurich, Luzern, Sion, Aarau and Basel.
Kavelashvili was disqualified from running for president of the Georgian Football Federation in 2015 due to a lack of higher education — a requirement for the role.
He has served as an MP for Georgian Dream since 2016 and was elected to the legislature on the party’s list in October 2024 polls that opposition groups say were rigged and have refused to recognise.
In 2022, Kavelashvili, alongside other Georgian Dream lawmakers, established a parliamentary faction called People’s Power — an anti-Western group that officially split from the governing party but was widely seen as its satellite.
He is known for obscenity-laced statements against opponents and has accused Western leaders of trying to drag Georgia into Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Georgian Dream nominated Kavelashvili for the largely ceremonial presidential post in late November, aiming to strengthen its grip on power.
But his nomination outraged many in Georgia, especially those taking to the streets daily for the last two weeks to protest against Georgian Dream drifting from its aim of joining the EU.
“I can hardly imagine anyone less suited for the role of head of state,” one protester, historian Nika Gobronidze, 53, told AFP.
He said Ivanishvili, the businessman widely believed to be pulling the strings in Georgian politics, chose Kavelashvili as a tool he could control.
“Caligula wanted his horse to be a consul, our oligarch wants his puppet Kavelashvili to be a president,” he said, referring to the notorious Roman emperor.
– ‘Illegitimate’ –
The electoral process made it a foregone conclusion that Kavelashvili would be the next president, with incumbent Salome Zurabishvili set to be removed from office.
But Kavelashvili’s legitimacy will be shaky from the onset, with constitutional law experts — including an author of Georgia’s constitution, Vakhtang Khmaladze — calling his election “illegitimate”.
Tbilisi is currently engulfed in a constitutional crisis, with Zurabishvili demanding a re-run of October’s parliamentary elections.
The new parliament approved its own credentials in violation of a legal requirement to await a court decision on Zurabishvili’s bid to have the election results annulled — which was later thrown out.
Zurabishvili has declared the new parliament and government “illegitimate” and vowed not to step down at the end of her term on December 29 if Georgian Dream does not organise a fresh parliamentary vote.
Meanwhile, South Korean lawmakers on Saturday voted to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over his failed martial law bid, with the opposition declaring a “victory of the people”.
The vote took place as hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Seoul in rival rallies for and against Yoon, who launched a failed attempt to impose martial law on December 3.Out of 300 lawmakers, 204 voted to impeach the president on allegations of insurrection. 85 voted against. Three abstained, with eight votes nullified.With the impeachment, Yoon has been suspended from office while South Korea’s Constitutional Court deliberates on the vote.
Prime Minister Han Duck-soo is now the nation’s interim leader.
The court now has 180 days to rule on Yoon’s future.
Two hundred votes were needed for the impeachment to pass, and opposition lawmakers needed to convince at least eight parliamentarians from Yoon’s conservative People Power Party (PPP) to switch sides.
A Seoul police official earlier told AFP at least 200,000 people had massed outside parliament in support of removing the president.
On the other side of Seoul near Gwanghwamun square, police estimated 30,000 had rallied in support of Yoon, blasting patriotic songs and waving South Korean and American flags.
“Yoon had no choice but to declare martial law. I approve of every decision he has made as president,” supporter Choi Hee-sun, 62, told AFP before the vote.
The South Korean president has vowed to fight on and doubled down on unsubstantiated claims the opposition is in league with the country’s communist foes.
– ‘Defend democracy’ –
The main opposition Democratic Party said on Saturday ahead of the vote that impeachment was the “only way” to “safeguard the Constitution, the rule of law, democracy and South Korea’s future”.
“We can no longer endure Yoon’s madness,” spokeswoman Hwang Jung-a said.
At the rally outside parliament supporting impeachment, volunteers gave out free hand warmers on Saturday morning to fight the sub-zero temperatures, as well as coffee and food.
K-pop singer Yuri of the band Girl’s Generation — whose song “Into the New World” has become a protest anthem — said she had pre-paid for food for fans attending the demonstration.
