lennart
23-11-03, 18:09
Georgia's Saakashvili: a man with Western ideals
Sun 23 November, 2003 10:36
By Elizabeth Piper
TBILISI (Reuters) - Mikhail Saakashvili, who organised some of the biggest protests in Georgia in a bid to topple President Eduard Shevardnadze, is a U.S.-educated lawyer with a burning ambition to take over the leadership.
A man who makes little effort to hide his emotions, Saakashvili has set his sights on pulling the ex-Soviet state up by the bootstraps and towards the West.
"This country needs new energy and new leadership and certainly I represent a generation that should take over, either me or somebody else," Saakashvili, 35, said recently in the English he perfected first at Columbia University and then at George Washington University.
Pride in his achievements is clear in his office and his demeanour. His office walls are sprinkled with press cuttings of his career.
"I am fighting for my eight-year-old son, and I will just do everything for him to live in a normal country rather than this semi-banana republic," he said.
Saakashvili, married to a Dutch woman, knows the ways of the West.He studied first in Ukraine, then in the United States and France. But he always planned to return home.
Once back, he was appointed justice minister. Moreover, he was groomed for power by Shevardnadze, now 75 and viewed as the saviour of the nation when he took over the former Soviet republic as it emerged from a civil war.
But by 2001, the man who saw Shevardnadze as a mentor had quit his ministerial job in protest against government corruption and the veteran leader's inability to combat it.
"I consider it immoral for myself to remain as a member of Shevardnadze's government," he said at the time.
Later that year he formed what is now Georgia's main opposition party, the United National Movement. According to opinion polls -- cited in a biography issued by his press office -- he is the "most popular politician for the last two years".
But Saakashvili clearly still feels something for the white-haired leader he is determined to replace.
"I told him, with great pain...when I met him: Look Mr President you had a great chance to become the founding father of a new Georgian nation, and you missed it," he said of a recent meeting with Shevardnadze.
Hmm, hij is getrouwd een Nederlandse vrouw, wat grappig.
Ik zal maar meteen vertellen wat ik nog meer in mijn hoofd rond spookt: We weten nog allemaal voor wie Mabel Wisse Smit werkt(e)? The Open Society Institute, van George Soros. Het OSI heeft Saakashvili moreel en wellicht ook financieel gesteund.
Een tipje van de sluier:
http://www.amcham.hu/BusinessHungary/16-07/articles/16-06_22.asp
Mr. Soros presented both Zhurab Zhavania, former Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, and Mikhail Saakashvili, former Minister of Justice in Georgia, with the CEU's "Open Society Prize" for their ongoing struggle to establish democracy and the rule of law and to eliminate corruption in Georgia. Mr. Saakashvili, placed on a KGB blacklist as a student, said, "Although I cried for half an hour at the time, the fall of the Berlin Wall was just [the removal] of one barrier on the way of change. But they [the former rulers] are erecting new barriers. They have seized state assets and now control the media. It's a constant fight between the forces of change and what I call the forces of evil conservatism."
Sun 23 November, 2003 10:36
By Elizabeth Piper
TBILISI (Reuters) - Mikhail Saakashvili, who organised some of the biggest protests in Georgia in a bid to topple President Eduard Shevardnadze, is a U.S.-educated lawyer with a burning ambition to take over the leadership.
A man who makes little effort to hide his emotions, Saakashvili has set his sights on pulling the ex-Soviet state up by the bootstraps and towards the West.
"This country needs new energy and new leadership and certainly I represent a generation that should take over, either me or somebody else," Saakashvili, 35, said recently in the English he perfected first at Columbia University and then at George Washington University.
Pride in his achievements is clear in his office and his demeanour. His office walls are sprinkled with press cuttings of his career.
"I am fighting for my eight-year-old son, and I will just do everything for him to live in a normal country rather than this semi-banana republic," he said.
Saakashvili, married to a Dutch woman, knows the ways of the West.He studied first in Ukraine, then in the United States and France. But he always planned to return home.
Once back, he was appointed justice minister. Moreover, he was groomed for power by Shevardnadze, now 75 and viewed as the saviour of the nation when he took over the former Soviet republic as it emerged from a civil war.
But by 2001, the man who saw Shevardnadze as a mentor had quit his ministerial job in protest against government corruption and the veteran leader's inability to combat it.
"I consider it immoral for myself to remain as a member of Shevardnadze's government," he said at the time.
Later that year he formed what is now Georgia's main opposition party, the United National Movement. According to opinion polls -- cited in a biography issued by his press office -- he is the "most popular politician for the last two years".
But Saakashvili clearly still feels something for the white-haired leader he is determined to replace.
"I told him, with great pain...when I met him: Look Mr President you had a great chance to become the founding father of a new Georgian nation, and you missed it," he said of a recent meeting with Shevardnadze.
Hmm, hij is getrouwd een Nederlandse vrouw, wat grappig.
Ik zal maar meteen vertellen wat ik nog meer in mijn hoofd rond spookt: We weten nog allemaal voor wie Mabel Wisse Smit werkt(e)? The Open Society Institute, van George Soros. Het OSI heeft Saakashvili moreel en wellicht ook financieel gesteund.
Een tipje van de sluier:
http://www.amcham.hu/BusinessHungary/16-07/articles/16-06_22.asp
Mr. Soros presented both Zhurab Zhavania, former Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, and Mikhail Saakashvili, former Minister of Justice in Georgia, with the CEU's "Open Society Prize" for their ongoing struggle to establish democracy and the rule of law and to eliminate corruption in Georgia. Mr. Saakashvili, placed on a KGB blacklist as a student, said, "Although I cried for half an hour at the time, the fall of the Berlin Wall was just [the removal] of one barrier on the way of change. But they [the former rulers] are erecting new barriers. They have seized state assets and now control the media. It's a constant fight between the forces of change and what I call the forces of evil conservatism."