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Fuller: Georgian Leader's Popularity Has Dramatically Fallen

Council on Foreign Relations

Interviewee: Elizabeth Fuller, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

November 9, 2007

Elizabeth Fuller, an expert on Georgian affairs for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, says that while President Mikheil Saakashvili is regarded in the United States and the West as “a model democrat,” his popularity has plummeted in Georgia. Fuller says the protests in Tbilisi, which sparked a state of emergency, were due in part to “widespread popular resentment” at Saakashvili for failure to deliver on economic promises and lack of progress on electoral and judicial reforms.

There have been major protests in the capital of Georgia against President Mikheil Saakashvili, who ordered a state of temporary emergency in the capital and just today has announced new presidential elections in January, a year ahead of schedule. Could you provide some background?

The perception in the West is that Saakashvili is a model democrat. This is based very largely on the fact that he has a Western education [he graduated from Columbia University Law School] and also by virtue of the contrast with Eduard Shevardnadze [a former Soviet foreign minister, later president of Georgia], whom he succeeded. Human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Freedom House have been questioning this image almost from the very beginning. After he was elected president in 2004, Saakashvili had the parliament amend the constitution to strengthen the power of the president. Many things he has done have seemed to cut legal corners, and have been very questionable like arresting Shevardnadze’s associates and then letting them buy their way out of jail.

There was a major scandal last year when interior ministry personnel were implicated in beating up and murdering a young banker and Shevardnadze wouldn’t hear any criticism of the interior minister and would not agree to sack him.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.