Mikheil Saakashvili
Thirty-six-year-old Mikheil Saakashvili was elected president in 2004 with a mind-boggling 97 percent of the vote, and a mandate to fight corruption, return Georgia's two breakaway regions and accelerate the country's integration with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union. It was a level of popular support that the pro-Western leader himself acknowledged could only decrease with time.
The years since his election have been marked by both historic breakthroughs ( stamping out police corruption, far-reaching education reforms, road repairs) and mega-crises ( a crippling trade embargo by Russia, heightened tensions with both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the death of Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania.)
The government's November 7 response to opposition protests has proven one of the most decisive moments, as Saakashvili himself has acknowledged. The dispersal of protestors, shutdown of pro-opposition television broadcasters and imposition of a state of emergency sparked the sharpest international criticism heard since Saakashvili's advent to power. European and American diplomats alike, however, hailed his decision to hold early presidential elections as a much-needed step to reaffirm Georgia's commitment to democracy.
The root of much of Saakashvili's international appeal still lies in his aggressive campaign for change. Such upheavals, however, have also sparked much of his domestic opposition.
Although by mid-December his formal campaign platform had not yet been announced, he has campaigned largely with pledges to reduce poverty and unemployment, and to return Internally Displaced Persons to their homes in the conflict zones of breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Born in Tbilisi in 1967, Saakashvili studied at the Kiev University Institute of International Relations, and received a master's degree in law from Columbia University, with additional studies at the George Washington University National Center of Law and the Strasbourg Human Rights International Institute. He practiced commercial law in New York for one year, returning to Georgia in 1995, when he was elected to parliament and became chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional, Legal Issues and Legal Affairs.
He was appointed as Minister of Justice under then President Eduard Shevardnadze in 2000, but resigned the post one year later, and left Shevardnadze's Citizens Union to establish his own party, the National Movement. After being re-elected to parliament, he resigned to run for the Tbilisi City Council, a local body which he later chaired.
His popularity was built as an anti-corruption crusader with the slogan "Tbilisi without Shevardnadze," a devise which became "Georgia without Shevardnadze!" in the 2003 parliamentary elections. The line has since been taken up by Georgia's current opposition as "Georgia without a President."
Website:
http://www.unm.ge/vote
Address: 1 Melikishvilis Kucha, Tbilisi
Tel: (995-32) 92-05-99
