Mikheil Saakashvili

Mikheil Saakashvili was elected president of Georgia after a bloodless revolution in 2003. A graduate of Columbia Law School in New York, fluent in four languages and in the values of free-market democracies, he was deemed a savior for the post-Soviet landscape.

Mr. Saakashvili has been a staunch ally of the United States in the volatile Caucasus region, dispatching troops to Iraq to show his support. He vowed to crack down on corruption, and introduced reforms that brought foreign investment and growth to one of the region's poorest countries.

He also pledged to restore federal rule to three regions that had been essentially independent since the fighting that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union -- Ajaria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He found quick success in Ajaria, a Black Sea region on the border with Turkey. After initial saber-rattling that alarmed many around the region, Mr. Saakashvili in 2005 tried a softer approaching, offering a package of autonomy and incentives to South Ossetia. His overtures were rejected.

By 2007, discontent was rising among the opposition, who pointed to what they called renewed corruption and to the economic inequality that accompanied the country's new growth. The unhappiness boiled over into six days of street protests in November, which were brought to a close by a violent police crackdown as Mr. Saakashvili declared a state of emergency. As critics wondered whether he was showing a new dictatorial side, he turned around and ordered snap elections, and won a new five-year term in January 2008 with 52 percent of the vote.

In August 2008, he ordered an attack on separatists in South Ossetia, one of two territories - Abkhazia is the other - where Georgia and Russia had been locked in a 15-year standoff. Georgian forces were quickly routed, and Russia seized both territories.

Mr. Saakashvili cast the attack as a necessary response to a Russian invasion, but no evidence emerged to verify the claim, and political opponents said he acted rashly.

Russian leaders have made it brutally clear that they want him out.

The internal call for his resignation grew in the months following the war and in April 2009 tens of thousands of protesters marched through the streets of Tbilisi bearing signs and chanting slogans against Mr. Saakashvili.

While the atmosphere in front of the Parliament building where the protesters gathered to demand his resignation was tense, the day's events unfolded without violence. A smaller number of protestors gathered again the next day.

Georgia put down a brief military mutiny that aimed to disrupt NATO military exercises in May 2009, ratcheting up tensions a day before the exercises were scheduled to begin over Russian objections.

In May 2010 voters in Tbilisi overwhelmingly endorsed Mr. Saakashvili's ruling party in municipal elections, barely a year after opposition parties had thronged the streets vowing to force him from office.

Mr. Saakashvili had declared that the mayor of Tbilisi would for the first time be directly elected by voters, and moved up nationwide local elections from October to May. The changes were part of a package of reforms intended to placate opposition leaders, who blamed him for leading the country into war with Russia.

Results from the Central Election Commission gave a solid victory to the incumbent mayor, Gigi Ugulava, a longtime political ally of Mr. Saakashvili. Mr. Saakashvili's United National Movement appeared to shut out the opposition in nationwide municipal races, which elect city councils.

The race in Tbilisi, in particular, was seen as an indicator of who may run to succeed Mr. Saakashvili when his term ends in 2013, and deflated the expectations of Georgia's opposition, which counts Tbilisi, home to more than a quarter of the electorate, as its most important stronghold.

Information From: nytimes.com/