Mikheil Saakashvili

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Mikheil Saakashvili მიხეილ სააკაშვილი
President of Georgia
Incumbent
Assumed office  20 January 2008
Prime Minister	Lado Gurgenidze Grigol Mgaloblishvili Nikoloz Gilauri
Preceded by	Nino Burjanadze (Acting)
In office 25 January 2004 – 25 November 2007
Prime Minister	Zurab Zhvania Zurab Noghaideli Lado Gurgenidze
Preceded by	Nino Burjanadze (Acting)
Succeeded by	Nino Burjanadze (Acting)
Minister of Justice
In office 12 October 2000 – 5 September 2001
President	Eduard Shevardnadze
Prime Minister	Avtandil Jorbenadze
Born	21 December 1967 (age 42)[1] Tbilisi, Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union (now Georgia)[1]
Nationality	Georgian
Political party	United National Movement
Spouse(s)	Sandra Roelofs
Children	Eduard Saakashvili Nikoloz Saakashvili
Residence	Tbilisi, Georgia
Alma mater	Kiev State University Columbia University George Washington University
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	Georgian Orthodox
Signature

Mikheil Saakashvili (Georgian: მიხეილ სააკაშვილი, IPA: [mixɛil sɑɑkʼɑʃvili]; born 21 December 1967) is a Georgian politician, the third and current President of Georgia and leader of the United National Movement Party. Saakashvili became president on 25 January 2004 after President Eduard Shevardnadze resigned in a November 2003 bloodless "Rose Revolution" led by Saakashvili and his political allies, Nino Burjanadze and Zurab Zhvania. Saakashvili was re-elected in the early Georgian presidential election of 5 January 2008. He is widely regarded as a pro-NATO and pro-USA leader who has spearheaded a series of political and economic reforms. He has been criticized for authoritarian tendencies and worsening human rights record in the country. Opposition parties have also accused him of rigging elections and using riot police to crush opposition rallies.^[2]
Some non-Georgian sources spell Saakashvili's first name via the Russian (Михаил Саакашвили) as Mikhail. In Georgia, he is commonly known as "Misha," a hypocorism for Mikheil.^[3]
He is married to Sandra E. Roelofs, of Dutch origin, and has two sons, Eduard and Nikoloz. Apart from his native Georgian, he speaks fluent English, French, Russian, and Ukrainian,^[4][5] and has some command of Ossetian and Spanish.^[6][7]

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[edit] Early life and career

Mikheil Saakashvili was born in Tbilisi,^[1] capital of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic in the Soviet Union, to a Georgian intelligentsia family. His father, Nikoloz Saakashvili, is a physician who practices medicine in Tbilisi and directs a local Balneological Center. His mother, Giuli Alasania, is a historian who lectures at Tbilisi State University.
During University, he served his shortened military service with the Soviet Border Troops in 1989/90. Saakashvili graduated from the Institute of International Relations (Department of International Law) of the Kiev State University (Ukraine) in 1992. He briefly worked as a human rights officer for the interim State Council of Georgia following the overthrow of President Zviad Gamsakhurdia before receiving a fellowship from the United States State Department (via the Edmund S. Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program). He received an LL.M. from Columbia Law School in 1994 and took classes at The George Washington University Law School the following year. In 1995, he also received a diploma from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.
After graduation, while on internship in the New York law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler in early 1995, Saakashvili was approached by Zurab Zhvania, an old friend from Georgia who was working on behalf of President Eduard Shevardnadze to enter politics. He stood in the December 1995 elections along with Zhvania, and both men won seats in parliament, standing for the Union of Citizens of Georgia, Shevardnadze's party.
Saakashvili was chairman of the parliamentary committee which was in charge of creating a new electoral system, an independent judiciary and a non-political police force. Opinion surveys recognised him to be the second most popular person in Georgia, behind Shevardnadze. He was named "man of the year"^{[dubious – discuss]} by a panel of journalists and human rights advocates in 1997. In January 2000, Saakashvili was appointed Vice-President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
On 12 October 2000, Saakashvili became Minister of Justice for the government of President Shevardnadze. He initiated major reforms in the Georgian criminal justice and prisons system. This earned praise^{[dubious – discuss]} from international observers and human rights activists^{[citation needed]}. But in mid-2001 he became involved in a major controversy with the Economics Minister Ivane Chkhartishvili, State Security Minister Vakhtang Kutateladze and Tbilisi police chief Ioseb Alavidze, accusing them of profiting from corrupt business deals.
Saakashvili resigned on 5 September 2001, saying that "I consider it immoral for me to remain as a member of Shevardnadze's government." He declared that corruption had penetrated to the very center of the Georgian government and that Shevardnadze lacked the will to deal with it, warning that "current developments in Georgia will turn the country into a criminal enclave in one or two years."

[edit] In the United National Movement

Further information: Rose Revolution

Having resigned from the government and quit the Shevardnadze-run Union of Citizens of Georgia party, Saakashvili founded the United National Movement (UNM) in October 2001, a right-of-center political party with a touch of nationalism, to provide a focus for part of the Georgian reformists leaders. In June 2002, he was elected as the Chairman of the Tbilisi Assembly ("Sakrebulo") following an agreement between the United National Movement and the Georgian Labour Party. This gave him a powerful new platform from which to criticize the government.
Georgia held parliamentary elections on 2 November 2003 which were denounced by local and international observers as being grossly rigged. Saakashvilli claimed that he had won the elections (a claim supported by independent exit polls), and urged Georgians to demonstrate against Shevardnadze's government and engage in nonviolent civil disobedience against the authorities. Saakashvili's UNM and Burdjanadze-Democrats united to demand the ouster of Shevardnadze and the rerun of the elections.
Massive political demonstrations were held in Tbilisi in November, with over 100,000 people participating and listening to speeches by Saakashvili and other opposition figures. The Kmara ("Enough!") youth organization (a Georgian counterpart of the Serbian "Otpor") and several NGOs, like Liberty Institute, were active in all protest activities. After an increasingly tense two weeks of demonstrations, Shevardnadze resigned as President on 23 November, to be replaced on an interim basis by parliamentary speaker Nino Burjanadze. While the revolutionary leaders did their best to stay within the constitutional norms, many called the change of government a popular coup dubbed by Georgian media as the Rose Revolution.
Saakashvili's "storming of Georgia's parliament" in 2003 "put U.S. diplomats off guard. .... [Saakashvili] ousted a leader the U.S. had long backed, Eduard Shevardnadze."^[8] Seeking support, Saakashvili went outside the U.S. State Department. He hired Randy Scheunemann, now Sen. John McCain's top foreign-policy adviser, as a lobbyist and used Daniel Kunin of USAID and the NDI as a full-time adviser.^[8]
On 24 February 2004 the United National Movement and the United Democrats had amalgamated. The new political movement was named the National Movement - Democrats (NMD). The movement's main political priorities include raising pensions and providing social services to the poor, its main base of support; fighting corruption; and increasing state revenue.

[edit] Presidency

[edit] First Term

Saakashvili's inauguration as President of Georgia

On 4 January 2004 Mikheil Saakashvili won the presidential elections in Georgia with more than 96% of the votes cast, making him the youngest national president in Europe. Saakashvili ran on a platform of opposing corruption and improving pay and pensions. He has promised to improve relations with the outside world. Although he is strongly pro-Western and intends to seek Georgian membership of NATO and the European Union, he has also spoken of the importance of better relations with Russia. He faces major problems, however, particularly Georgia's difficult economic situation and the still unresolved question of separatism in the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Abkhazia regards itself as independent of Georgia and did not take part in the elections, while South Ossetia favours union with its northern counterpart in Russia.
Saakashvili was sworn in as President in Tbilisi on 25 January 2004. Immediately after the ceremony he signed a decree establishing a new state flag. On 26 January, in a ceremony held at the Tbilisi Kashueti Church of Saint George, he promulgated a decree granting permission for the return of the body of the first President of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, from Grozny (Chechen Republic) to Tbilisi and renaming a major road in the capital after Gamsakhurdia. He also released 32 Gamsakhurdia supporters (political prisoners) imprisoned by the Shevardnadze government in 1993-94.
In the first months of his presidency, Saakashvili faced a major political crisis in the southwestern Autonomous Republic of Adjara run by an authoritarian regional leader, Aslan Abashidze, who largely ignored the central Georgian government and was viewed by many as a pro-Russian politician. The crisis threatened to develop into an armed confrontation, but Saakashvili's government managed to resolve the conflict peacefully, forcing Abashidze to resign on 6 May 2004. Success in Adjara encouraged the new president to intensify his efforts towards bringing the breakaway South Ossetia back under the Georgian jurisdiction. The separatist authorities responded with intense militarization in the region, that led to armed clashes in August 2004. A stalemate ensued, and despite a new peace plan proposed by the Georgian government in 2005, the conflict remains unresolved. Recently, in late July 2006, Saakashvili's government managed to deal successfully with another major crisis, this time in Abkhazia's Kodori Gorge where Georgia's police forces disarmed a defiant militia led by a local warlord Emzar Kvitsiani.
Although the reforms initiated by President Saakashvili are considered to have mixed success, still the rate of corruption in the country has drastically reduced. According to the World Bank accounts, Georgia is named as the number one economic reformer in the world and the country ranks as 11 in term of ease of doing business, when most of the country's neighbours' are in the 100s of the World Bank's rank.^[9]
In his foreign policy, Saakashvili maintains close ties with the U.S. leadership, as well as other NATO countries, and remains one of the leaders of the GUAM organization. The Saakashvili-led Rose Revolution has been described by the White House as one of the most powerful movements in the modern history^[10] that has inspired others to seek freedom.^[11].

[edit] Economic policy

Saakashvili is a popular supporter of free market and believes that less government regulation of business is a good idea.^{[citation needed]} Georgia has become involved in international market transactions to a small extent, and in 2007 Bank of Georgia sold bonds at premium, when $200m five-year bond was priced with a coupon of 9 per cent at par, or 100 per cent of face value, after initially being priced at 9.5 per cent and investors pushed orders up to $600m.^[12]