Georgian parliament to confirm new govt next week - speaker

TBILISI. Jan 30 (Interfax) - The Georgian parliament will confirm the new prime minister and government as early as next week, Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili said on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili tendered his resignation on Monday, as he had been offered to head the Georgian Dream ruling party amid the election campaign. Incumbent Georgian Dream Chairman Irakli Kobakhidze will be the new prime minister. The decisions will be formally announced at the Georgian Dream congress on February 1.

"The reshuffle in the government and Georgian Dream aim to make the party stronger than ever in the parliamentary elections in October," Papuashvili said.

This is the first time since Georgia's transformation into a parliamentary republic that a candidate for prime minister will be nominated in parliament, "which is characteristic of European democracies," he said.

The reshuffle in the government and the ruling party "will do no good to the people of Georgia," the Georgian opposition said.

Incarcerated former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said on a social network that "every so-called reshuffle is a unilateral decision of oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili and a mockery of the Georgian people."