Mikheil Saakashvili, is an opposition leader in Georgia. Born in 1968, he is married to Sandra Roelofs, of Dutch origin.
Early Career
He was educated in Kiev, Strasbourg and Florence and received a law degree from Columbia University. While working in the New York law firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler, he was approached in early 1995 by Zurab Zhvania, an old friend from Georgia who was working on behalf of President Eduard Shevardnadze to recruit talented young Georgians 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 soon made a name for himself as chairman of the parliamentary committee charged with creating a new electoral system, an independent judiciary and a non-political police force. He achieved a high degree of public recognition, with opinion surveys finding him to be the second most popular person in Georgia, behind Shevardnadze. He was named "man of the year" by a panel of journalists and human rights advocates in 1997.
In October 2000, he accepted an offer from President Shevardnadze to become minister for justice. He initiated major reforms in the decrepit, corrupt and highly politicised Georgian criminal justice and prisons system. However, in 2001 he became involved in a major controversy with the Economics Minister Vano Chkhartishvili, State Security Minister Vakhtang Kutateladze and Tbilisi police chief Soso Alavidze, accusing them of profiting from corrupt business deals. He resigned in September 2001, declaring that corruption had penetrated to the very centre of Georgian government and warning that "current developments in Georgia will turn the country into a criminal enclave in one or two years."
Opposition
Having resigned and quit the Shevardnadze-run Union of Citizens of Georgia party, Saakashvili founded the National Movement for Democratic Changes at the start of 2002 to provide a focus for Georgian reformists. He joined forces with the New Right and the United Democrats (now headed by his old friend Zhurab Zhvania), to form a "broad democratic alliance". In June 2002, he was elected mayor of Tbilisi following an agreement between the National Movement and the Georgian Labour Party, which gave him a powerful new platform from which to criticize the government.
Georgia held parliamentary elections on November 2, 2003 which were denounced by local and international observers as being grossly rigged. Saakashvilli claimed a landslide victory and urged Georgians to demonstrate against Shevardnadze's government. After an increasingly tense two weeks of massive popular demonstrations, Shevardnadze bowed to the inevitable and resigned as President, to be replaced on an interim basis by parliamentary speaker Nino Burdzhanadze.
Following the downfall of Shevardnadze, the main opposition parties agreed to support Saakashvili as the joint opposition candidate in elections to be held in January 2004.
External link
- Journal: Modern Georgia's Young Founding Fathers by Stepehn Kinzer, New York Times, June 4, 1998
- Caspian Business News article on Mrs. Saakashvili-Roelofs