Saakashvili, Mikhail (1967– )

Georgian right-wing politician, president from 2004. In November 2003 he led the bloodless Rose Revolution which, through popular demonstrations in the wake of rigged parliamentary elections, overthrew President Edvard Shevardnadze, a survivor from the Soviet era. A charismatic populist, who trained in law in the USA, Saakashvili made his reputation campaigning against the deep-rooted corruption in the Georgian state. Re-elected in January 2008, he miscalculated in August 2008 when he sent troops into Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway ethnic-Russian dominated enclave of South Ossetia, following fighting between ethnic Georgians and South Ossetians, and was met by a Russian military invasion of South Ossetia and Georgia. This led to an international crisis which needed French mediation to broker a ceasefire.

He was elected president by a landslide (96% of the vote) in January 2004, taking over a country in which the black economy accounted for 60% of total activity, and whose outlying areas such as Adzharia were seeking to break away. During his first term, he had some success in tackling corruption, revived the economy, through free-market reforms, and in May 2004 peacefully resolved a conflict in Adzharia that threatened to develop into war. He pursued a pro-Western foreign policy, supporting the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Georgia, which has ambitions to join NATO and the EU, provided troops to support coalition and UN forces in Iraq, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. Following anti-government demonstrations in November 2007, he won the presidential election, held early in January 2008, with 53% of the vote and his United National Movement (EMN) party won the May 2008 parliamentary elections. In his second term, he sought to improve relations with Russia, but this was thwarted by the August 2008 crisis over South Ossetia.

Born into a Tbilisi professional family, Saakashvili studied law at Kiev University in the Ukraine and then at Columbia University and George Washington University in the USA. In 1995, at the invitation of Zurab Zhvania, president of the Georgian parliament, he returned to Georgia to become a candidate for the liberal Union of Georgian Citizens party, and was elected to parliament. Briefly a justice minister in 2000, he emerged as a strong critic of corruption. He set up the National Movement, which vowed to close Russian military bases in Georgia. He has support from the USA, which has interests in a $3 billion oil pipeline from Azerbaijan to the Turkish coast, via Georgia.