Mikheil Saakashvili

Mikheil "Misha" Saakashvili^{[nb 1]} (born 21 December 1967) is a Georgian-Ukrainian politician.^[6][7] He was the third president of Georgia for two consecutive terms from January 2004 to November 2013, with a break from November 2007 to January 2008 after he stepped down following anti-government demonstrations and ahead of an early presidential election. He is the founder and former chairman of Georgia's United National Movement party. From May 2015 until November 2016, Saakashvili was the governor of Ukraine's Odesa Oblast.^[1][8]

A jurist by occupation, Saakashvili entered Georgian politics in 1995 as a member of Parliament and Minister of Justice under President Eduard Shevardnadze. He then founded the opposition United National Movement party. In 2003, as a leading opposition figure, he accused the government of rigging the 2003 Georgian parliamentary election, triggering mass street protests and President Shevardnadze's ouster in the bloodless Rose Revolution. Saakashvili's key role in the protests led to his election as president in 2004. He was reelected in 2008. However, his party lost the 2012 Georgian parliamentary election. Term limits meant he could not stand again, and an opposition candidate, nominated by Bidzina Ivanishvili and Coalition Georgian Dream, Giorgi Margvelashvili, won the 2013 presidential election.

As president, Saakashvili oversaw far-reaching reforms. His government fired and replaced the entire police force, hoping to root out corruption, and pursued a zero-tolerance policy towards crime. Its neoliberal economic policy abolished various taxes, lowered corporate income tax from 20% to 15% and dividend tax from 10% to 5%. Several ministries were abolished and 60,000 civil servants dismissed, slashing government spending, although the military budget rose to 9.2% of GDP by 2007. In 2009, Forbes ranked Georgia's tax burden as the fourth lowest in the world.^[9] GDP grew 70% between 2003 and 2013. Per-capita income roughly tripled, but by 2013 about a quarter of the population was still below the poverty line, even as international perceptions emphasised business-friendliness and reduced corruption.

Saakashvili was embroiled in scandals and accused of being behind police brutality, such as the beating of opposition politician Valery Gelashvili, the murder of Sandro Girgvliani, and systemic torture and rape in the Georgian prison system.

In late 2013, ex-President Saakashvili left Georgia.^[10] In 2014, the Prosecutor's Office of Georgia filed criminal charges against him. In 2018, the Tbilisi City Court sentenced him in absentia to six years in prison for, among other things, ordering Valery Gelashvili's beating.^[11] Saakashvili continued to manage his party from abroad.

In July 2017, Saakashvili (then visiting the US) was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship by President Poroshenko, and became stateless.^[12][13] He reentered Ukraine, but was arrested in February 2018 and deported. He was granted permanent residency in the Netherlands, his wife's country. In May 2019, he returned to Ukraine after newly-elected President Volodymyr Zelenskyy restored his citizenship.^[14][15] Zelenskyy appointed Saakashvili to lead Ukraine's National Reform Council in May 2020.^[16]

In October 2021, Saakashvili announced his return to Georgia after an eight-year absence.^[17][18] Later the same day Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili announced that he had been arrested in Tbilisi.^[19]

In 2021, he began serving the six-year in absentia prison sentence imposed in 2018.^[11] Since May 2022 has been treated in a civilian clinic in Tbilisi.^[20]

Cite error: There are <ref group=nb> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=nb}} template (see the help page).