The Rise and Fall Of Mikheil Saakashvili

Georgia has been indelibly associated with Saakashvili ever since he led the Rose Revolution against a corrupt, neo-Soviet government in 2003. Now, as he prepares to make way for a new president with sharply reduced powers following elections on Sunday where his party’s candidate lost, what happens to him will indelibly mark what his country becomes once he is gone. A slew of arrests of senior UNM members, a sustained harassment campaign, and Ivanishvili’s repeated threats to prosecute Saakashvili have led many to fear Georgia is yet another post-Soviet state to backslide into Moscow’s embrace or, at least, its ways. But Saakashvili’s voluntary concession of power, unprecedented in Georgian history, has kept hopes alive that Georgia remains on the path to democratic development.