Thousands protest Georgian leader
Rally is one year after similar event quashed by police
TBILISI, Georgia - Thousands of antigovernment demonstrators poured into the streets of Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, yesterday, hoping to weaken the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili as it strives to maintain power despite a catastrophic war with Russia and growing economic malaise at home.
The large, though generally subdued, demonstration occurred one year after riot police officers violently quashed opposition protests in Tbilisi. About 500 people were injured last year when police pelted unarmed civilians with clubs and rubber bullets, and used tear gas and water cannons to chase protesters from the streets.
That event roused accusations both domestically and internationally that the president's promises of democracy and reform, made upon taking power in a 2003 bloodless coup, have fallen short, leaving Georgia only slightly more democratic than the country's post-Soviet neighbors like Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Russia.
But while Saakashvili is perhaps still off kilter after last year's political tumult and the war with Russia in August - which many see as a humiliation for Georgia that the president may have provoked - he remains popular and appears still very much in control.
At yesterday's protest, opposition politicians condemned Saakashvili's handling of the war and blamed the president for losing two separatist Georgian enclaves: South Ossetia, over which the war was fought, and Abkhazia. Russia has consolidated its control of both enclaves and now recognizes them as independent states, despite widespread international disapproval of the move.
Protesting opposition members also repeated accusations of fraud in presidential and parliamentary elections held earlier this year and called for early elections to be held in the spring.
But the message was equally one of patience, with opposition leaders apparently using the protests to gauge the political mood just months after the majority of Georgians rallied to the side of Saakashvili in the face of a Russian invasion.
"It is impossible to reach freedom in half an hour, one hour, or two hours," Kakha Kukava, an opposition leader, told the protesters.
Some of the demonstrators were disappointed in calls to wait, saying they would like Saakashvili and his team to be removed from power immediately, lest they provoke renewed fighting with Russia.
"Saakashvili should go right now," said Eka Jipashvili, one of the protesters. 