The Parliament approved on July 1 with its third, final hearing the government-backed proposal over the new rule of electing a City Council and the Tbilisi Mayor. The opposition parties condemned this new rule as undemocratic.

This new rule envisages the election of the 25 members of the City Council through a first-past-the-post, “winner takes all” system, while the remaining 12 seats will be distributed, through so called a “compensatory list,” among those parties which garner at least 4% of votes in all ten constituencies of the capital city. The 37-member City Council will then elect the Tbilisi Mayor from among its members with at least 2/3 of votes for a four-year term.