Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili set October 21 as the date of holding municipal elections in Georgia.

Setting of the election date marks the formal launch of pre-election period, which means that whole set of legal obligations envisaged by the election code will now go into effect, among them restrictions on use of administrative resources, and doubling salaries for election administration staff.

59 municipalities and five self-governing cities, including Tbilisi, will elect their Mayors and Sakrebulos (City Councils). Total of seven candidates have already been nominated for the mayoral elections in Tbilisi.

President Margvelashvili announced in late June that municipal elections would be held at the end of the third week of October, 2017. He, however, added that an official decree specifying the exact election date would be issued in late August, 60 days before the election day, to avoid “budgetary and legal” complications.