Word: saakashvili
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...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...
...Saakashvili went out of his way to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin that he could serve as a go-between to hammer out an acceptable balance of American and Russian interests in the Caucasus. This let Saakashvili restore Ajaria, one of the breakaway and Moscow-oriented provinces, to Georgia's central authority, as Putin gave it up as a test of Saakashvili's intentions. At that, however, Saakashvili's luck seems to have run out: Russia firmly controls Abkhazia and South Ossetia - the other two breakaway republics, with no intentions of giving them back, and keeps turning up the heat...
...failure to return the lost territories seriously undercut Saakashvili at home. Many began to grumble about his reform not improving their living conditions fast enough. Complaints arose that his macro-reform was adversely affecting ordinary businessmen and traders. A crackdown on the black market in cigarettes and alcohol left thousands of street vendors without jobs. Growing incomes are offset by rising inflation and these reforms have made many Georgians pay tax and utilities bills in full. The government is also dramatically increasing the defense budget instead of raising pensions. The opposition, represented by nine parties, invoked Saakashvili's increasingly authoritarian...
...opposition also alleged corruption and crime in Saakashvili's own team. The real bombshell came in September 2007, when Irakli Okruashvili, once Saakashvili's closest confidant and Defense Minister, publicly accused the President of ordering a political murder. Okruashvili also claimed that the popular Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania, whose mysterious death in January 2005 was officially explained by a gas leak, was in fact murdered. These allegations have been denied by Saakashvili...