Nino Bolkvadze, an openly openly lesbian woman presented as a candidate for Tbilisi City Council. (Netgazeti)
An openly lesbian woman is running for Tbilisi City Council in the upcoming local self-government elections.
Nino Bolkvadze, a human rights lawyer and a queer rights activist, was presented as a candidate for the Republican Party on 15 September.
‘It is important for me to voice principal issues — the existence of real, invisible problems, that people are fighting for survival, homelessness, unemployment, low quality of life’, Bolkvadze said during an exclusive interview with Liberali magazine.
Bolkvadze says she will work to voice the problems that queer people in Tbilisi face, but her main priority will be safety.
‘It’s the air we breathe, threats while getting an, when bullying in schools is widespread, psychological health, management of harmful attitudes, domestic violence, hate crimes’, she told Liberali.
According to queer rights group Equality Movement, Bolkvadze is the first openly lesbian woman to run for the local elections in Georgia.
Bolkvadze is in seventh place in the proportional list of the Republican Party, who were formerly in alliance with the ruling Georgian Dream. The Republicans, members of which served as Defence, Environment, and Reconciliation ministers after 2012, left the alliance in 2016. Davit Usupashvili, the former head of the party chaired Georgia’s parliament in 2012–2016.
Usupashvili and other leaders left the Republicans last year after failing to win any seats in the 2016 Parliamentary elections. He has recently created a new centrist political party, the Development Movement.
Tamar Kordzaia, political secretary of the Republican Party, said ‘it is disappointing that society is surprised when an openly lesbian person becomes a candidate’.
A former Christian Orthodox monk who served at the Monastery of Iviron on Mount Athos in northern Greece, is also among the top 10 Republican candidates.
In parallel to electing 64 mayors, Georgians will elect more than 2,000 members of 64 city councils on 21 October. Fifty members, half of whom will be elected through a proportional system, will form Tbilisi City Council.
According to international queer rights group ILGA-Europe, Georgia’s queer community still faces difficulties, with local NGOs continuing to receive reports of discrimination. ‘Many of these cases involved hate speech directed at LGBTI people, or bias-motivated violence — all occurring in spite of relatively recent anti-discrimination legislation. Surveys of public opinion also revealed distinctly negative feelings towards LGBTI people, re-emphasising the gap between laws on paper and the atmosphere in which people live’, ILGA’s annual 2017 report claimed.
US President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed foreign policy positions have often been vague, but can generally be understood as being based on a larger pivot toward isolationism. US disengagement from the South Caucasus, or an actual policy of tacit approval for authoritarianism, will redefine Washington’s role in the region.
Trump is not known for his detailed foreign policy positions in general, and much less when it comes to the regions of the world considered more peripheral to US interests,
Georgian Dream has lost an appeal against the victory of an ex-member in Tianeti’s mayoral race. Tamaz Mechiauri has been declared the victor by Tbilisi Court of Appeals who upheld a judgement from a lower court to overrule the Tianeti District Commission’s approval of 5 annulled ballots in favor of Georgian Dream’s candidate.
The Initial count by Tianeti District Commission gave Mechiauri a lead of a single vote over Georgian Dream’s Lela Kitesashvili. The commission then approved 5 annull
Kakha Kaladze has been elected Mayor of Tbilisi in Georgia’s local elections. The ruling Georgian Dream party won polls throughout the country, coming first in all 64 cities and municipalities electing mayors.
Local and international observers say that voting went ahead without serious incident, although a number of cases of party activists using voter lists at polling stations to mobilise supporters were reported.
Independent runner up
Kaladze, a former football player for AC Milan wh
A local leader of the ruling Georgian Dream party and four others have been shot near their local party headquarters in south-east Georgia.
Jeyhun Choydarov, a majoritarian candidate for Marneuli’s municipal council (sakrebulo), and four associates were wounded late at night on 19 October, at their headquarters in the village of Kizilajlo.
Four of the injured were rushed to hospital in Marneuli. According to a doctor at the hospital, all of them had suffered gunshot wounds, and two had to
An openly lesbian woman is running for Tbilisi City Council in the upcoming local self-government elections. 
