MOSCOW — Giorgi Margvelashvili, a former university rector and minister of education, was inaugurated Sunday as the president of Georgia, promising to continue the country’s efforts to integrate with Europe while pursuing better relations with Russia, a delicate balance that has generally eluded the former Soviet republics.
“By ensuring a precedent of transfer of power through parliamentary and presidential elections, we succeeded in moving to a substantially new stage in the development of our state,” Margvelashvili, 44, said in his inaugural address after a swearing-in ceremony in the courtyard of the old Parliament building in Tbilisi, the capital.
“The post-Soviet period is over,” Margvelashvili declared. “And the development of a modern type of democracy has started, laying the foundation for a new, European kind of political culture.”
Margvelashvili was the handpicked candidate of Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire whose party, Georgia Dream, swept to power in parliamentary elections in October 2012.
Ivanishvili has announced plans to resign this month after only a year in office, and has proposed that the interior minister, Irakli Gharibashvili, 31, be his successor.