Word: georgias
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...relationship with the U.S., meanwhile, is in transition. Though viewed with suspicion by some for his association with George W. Bush's democratic evangelism - "In some ways, he's the last neocon standing," says Lincoln Mitchell, a Georgia expert at Columbia University - Saakashvili remains close to Biden, who visited Georgia in August. A senior Obama Administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, says that in private talks, Biden "spoke very candidly about the importance of acting on his promise to pursue political reforms." Saakashvili said he likes the new Administration. "I saw mostly second-term Bush," Saakashvili laments: the Bush...
...professor. In 1993 he got his first prolonged taste of the U.S. when he won a fellowship to study law at Columbia. He lived in New York City and Washington for several years, passed the New York bar exam and worked in private practice before being summoned back to Georgia to be part of a movement of young reformers, many of whom had been living in the West, that would transform what had been until 1991 a republic of the Soviet Union...
...these tics are a small price to pay for his biggest asset: his tremendous, limitless energy. Columbia's Mitchell calls it "government by adrenaline." Saakashvili is addicted to quick, dramatic acts of leadership. Particularly in the early years, he got results. One example: when he came to power, Georgia's traffic police were notorious bribe seekers. So he fired every one of them and hired an entirely new, clean police force...
...Pretty Woman" and "Somewhere over the Rainbow." The town centerpiece is a long promenade with 800 palm trees, sleek benches designed in Valencia, Spain, and an artificial river lit neon blue. Working through the night, workers built the place in three months. Construction unions, Saakashvili joked, would come to Georgia only "when everything is already built." One of the renovated plazas will host a giant civic New Year's Eve concert featuring Julio Iglesias, whom Saakashvili decided to hire for just over $1 million. While going over blueprints with his Spanish architects, Saakashvili told me he likes buildings that...
...media and judiciary still aren't nearly independent enough. The opposition, whom Vice Prime Minister Temuri Yakobashvili dismissed as "losers, naifs and traitors," says it is persecuted for its dissent. "This energy and force [Saakashvili] has inside is a rare quality," says Sozar Subari, who was until recently Georgia's public defender. "But unfortunately, he used this to strengthen autocracy, not democracy...