"A guest is a gift from above," a storeowner told me over homemade vodka, honey and grapes during a recent trip to the breakaway region of Abkhazia. When God was distributing land to the world's nations, he continued, the Abkhaz missed out because they were busy attending to their guests.
New legislation concerning the election of Tbilisi's mayor has sparked a political debate over President Mikheil Saakashvili's commitment to democratic reform. Opposition leaders say the new law skews the electoral framework in a way that could help Saakashvili's National Movement maintain a tight grip on power.
A street protest in central Tbilisi touched off a sequence of events that resulted in a furious debate in Georgia's parliament -- punctuated by a fist-fight among MPs over the governing methods of President Mikheil Saakashvili's administration.
