TBILISI, September 4. /TASS/. Salome Zourabichvili is technically not Georgia’s president after she violated the constitution, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said.

"She is not the president. Salome Zourabichvili is not the president of Georgia. She herself recognized the legitimacy of the Constitutional Court when she filed a suit there. And this is the Constitutional Court that established that Salome Zourabichvili is an illegitimate president, that she is a president who violated the constitution. The only reason Salome Zourabichvili is formally retaining the presidential office is the support of the [United] National Movement," Kobakhidze said at a briefing.

According to him, after the opposition did not vote in the parliament to impeach Zourabichvili, she became "not the president of Georgia but the president of the National Movement and yet another ordinary puppet of the National Movement."

Last year, Zourabichvili made several visits abroad without the prime minister’s consent. The constitution permits the Georgian president to serve in a representative capacity in foreign policy only with the prime minister’s consent. Due to this the ruling Georgian Dream - Democratic Georgia party turned to the Constitutional Court in an effort to impeach the president. The court supported the remonstrance to remove Zourabichvili but the ruling party did not garner the sufficient number of votes in the parliament (at least 100 out of 150 votes). The opposition did not support Zourabichvili’s impeachment.

Earlier, Zourabichvili appealed to the Constitutional Court with a lawsuit against the law "on transparency of foreign influence" approved by the parliament. Similar lawsuits were filed by the opposition, NGOs and media outlets. In late August, the court held three sessions, hearing out the positions of the claimants. They demand that the law be recognized as not complying, in particular, with Article 78 of the Constitution according to which governing bodies must take all measures to integrate Georgia into the EU and NATO. The claimants also insisted on suspending the law until the court’s final decision.