Do we like them?

Do we like Salome Zourabichvili?

Our score: 7 out of 10. She backed Pride and refused to sign an anti-LGBTQ law, but her refusal didn't stop it and we couldn't open much on her wider record.

The story people know her for is the stoush over the October 2024 election. Georgian Dream declared victory with about 54 per cent of the vote, and Zourabichvili, then president, said the vote had been rigged. When prosecutors opened an investigation into alleged vote-rigging and summoned her, she refused to turn up, saying it was not up to the president to provide the proof.

On the harm test, her best moment came three weeks before that election. Parliament passed a bill on so-called family values that would ban gender transition, bar adoption by gay and transgender people and nullify same-sex marriages performed abroad. She refused to sign it, her spokeswoman confirmed, and sent it back to parliament.

Here's the catch: she returned the bill without vetoing it, so the parliament speaker could sign it into law, and it was set to take effect anyway. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze accused her of backing “pseudo-liberal propaganda”, while Amnesty International called the measures “homophobic and transphobic”. A gesture, then, rather than a roadblock, but it was the right gesture at a real political cost.

It wasn't a one-off. In July 2021, on the first day of Pride Week, she said Tbilisi Pride participants had the right to express themselves, and that violence, threats and hate speech were unacceptable. She also described tolerance as part of the country's identity. That's a head of state going on the record for LGBTQ+ people well before an election made it convenient.

Her more recent fight is with the authorities she accuses of finding new enemies. After the July power outages, she wrote on social media: “Expect new internal and external enemies — everyone except Russia.” Where you land depends on whether you read the sabotage investigation as a genuine security matter or, as she does, as a pretext, and the article quoted no official response.

The gaps matter. We couldn't open a full profile this time, so the backstory is light. We also found nothing on her views on climate or migrants, and no court ruling against her. A claim about her that only fringe or partisan outlets carry is tabloid territory and left out here.