Word: saakashvili
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Back in 2004, the people swept Saakashvili into power as the Prince of the Rose Revolution - a mass upheaval that overthrew the previous regime. The people hoped against hope that Saakashvili - young, strong, incorruptible and U.S.-educated - would redress the numerous ills of this small former Soviet republic, devastated by almost two decades of civil wars, the loss of three provinces, mass poverty, and bullied by its erstwhile Imperial master Russia...
Slipping from 96% of the vote in the January 2004 Presidential election to 51.96% four years later, in Saturday's national vote, signifies a dramatic drop for Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili...
...however, the electorate has taken a more realistic view at what Saakashvili, 40, has accomplished in these four years - and what he has also failed to deliver...
...Saakashvili had a lot going for him. In the Parliamentary March 2004 election, his National Movement-Democrats party carried 68% of the vote to dominate the legislative body. Both the U.S. and the E.U. saw him as "a beacon of democracy in that part of the world," as President George W. Bush put it on his visit to Tbilisi in May 2005. With that kind of domestic and international support, he launched comprehensive economic reform, restoring to the people such long forgotten luxuries like electricity, heat and water supplies...
...Georgian government boosted revenues by tightening up the administration of the tax system. Private investment went up and there has been a crackdown on corruption. Per capita income is up from $700 a year in 2003 to the current figure of $1,500. The most astonishing achievement was Saakashvili's reform of the traditionally corrupt police forces. He disbanded the entire Ministry of the Interior - with recruitment based on the western testing system. It may come as a joke to those who remember the old Georgia, but most police do not take bribes now - they're well paid and their...