Georgia on Sunday swore in its first female president, Salome Zurabishvili as opposition parties continue to denounce her election as fraudulent and demand snap parliamentary polls.
The inauguration paved the way for a new constitution to come into force, transforming the country into a parliamentary republic with a largely ceremonial president.
The event was held in the mediaeval town of Telavi in Georgia's eastern winemaking region of Kakheti.
French-born Zurabishvili, 66, took the oath of office in the courtyard of an 18th-century manor that belonged to Georgia's penultimate king Heraclius II.
Georgia's new President Salome Zurabishvili at her inauguration ceremony in Telavi on December 16, 2018.
"The goal of my presidency is to make Georgia's democratic development and its path towards Europe irreversible," she said in an inaugural speech.
"I will facilitate this process with the support of our strategic partner, the United States of America, and our European friends," she said.
Opposition parties have refused to recognise Zurabishvili's election last month and tried to hold a protest rally outside the royal residence.
But the plan was thwarted by police, who on Sunday morning blocked a kilometres-long opposition motorcade on a road leading from the capital Tbilisi to Telavi.
Pro-opposition Rustavi-2 TV channel reported that clashes briefly erupted between police officers and protesters as they tried to break through police ranks.
"Georgian Dream has taken away our constitution, our state institutions, our freedom of expression," defeated candidate Grigol Vashadze told journalists after a failed attempt to stage a protest in Telavi.
Zurabishvili was born in France to a Georgian family who fled the Bolshevik regime to Paris in 1921.
She studied international relations at the prestigious Paris Institute of Political Sciences before a 30-year career as a French diplomat, with postings to the United Nations, Washington and Chad.
Her career in French diplomacy culminated in a posting to Tbilisi, where then-president Saakashvili appointed her as foreign minister.
But Zurabishvili quickly made enemies in the ranks of the parliamentary majority, with MPs and a number of senior diplomats publicly accusing her of arrogance.
She was sacked in 2005 after a year on the job, though thousands took to the streets of the capital to protest her dismissal.
She then joined the opposition as a member of parliament and became one of Saakashvili's fiercest critics.
In her book "A Woman for Two Countries", published in France after her firing, she wrote: "Now, I have to engage in a political battle, which has never attracted me, which I never practised, which is being imposed on me."
Zurabishvili will be Georgia's last directly elected president as the country transitions to a parliamentary form of governance following a controversial constitutional reform.
The Caucasus country's next president will be elected in 2024 by a 300-member electoral college.
Adopted in September 2017, the constitutional change was protested by all opposition parties which denounced it as favouring the ruling party.
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