Truthdig - Ear to the Ground - Protesters Push for Georgian President to Step Down

			November 8, 2009 Log in / Register
			Text Size

The Rich? They Get Elected

Okinawans Step Up U.S. Base Protest

Conservatives Descend on Capitol for 'House Call' Protest

Keep the Government Out of the News Business

Steve Fraser on the Crisis of Capitalism

Kucinich: Why I Voted No
By Rep. Dennis Kucinich

America Performs Its Familiar Role of Propping Up a Dictator
By Robert Fisk

Happy Birthday, Pat Tillman
By Kevin Tillman

Sen. George McGovern on the Presidency From Lincoln to Obama

Salvador Floods Kill More Than 90

Hezbollah, Fearing War, Digs In

Okinawans Step Up U.S. Base Protest

House Passes Health Care Bill

Massive Malaria Vaccine Trial Begins

The Real Unemployment Number: 17.5%

‘Daily Show’ Insta-Classic: What Lurks Within Glenn Beck?

‘Left, Right & Center’: GOP Scores; Unemployment Up; Fort Hood Fallout

Obama to Tribal Nations: ‘You Will Not Be Forgotten’

Glenn Beck Gets a (Satirical) Drubbing From The Onion

Steve Fraser on the Crisis of Capitalism
By Steve Fraser

Ni Hao, Mickey Mouse: Disney Goes to Shanghai

Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, Father of Structuralism, Dies at 100

Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times
By Bill Boyarsky

Financial Meltdown 101

A Dig compiled by the editors of Truthdig

Vetting Sarah Palin

A Dig compiled by the editors of Truthdig

Pinochet and Me: A Chilean Anti-Memoir

By Marc Cooper
$11.05

Protesters Push for Georgian President to Step Down

AP photo / Shakh Aivazov

Demonstrators march toward Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili’s residence during a rally in Tbilisi on Friday.

During last summer’s war, Mikhail Saakashvili was beseeching the international community to help his country fend off “Russian aggression,” but now the biggest problem of the Georgian president is rising from within his nation’s own borders. Meanwhile, the U.S. is lying low on Georgians’ demand that Saakashvili resign the presidency.

AP via Google News:

About 20,000 demonstrators kept up the pressure on Georgia’s president to resign Friday, with some pelting his residence with cabbages and carrots on a second day of protests.

President Mikhail Saakashvili rejected their demands and called for talks.

The crowds were thinner than on Thursday, a national holiday, when three times as many demonstrators jammed the capital’s main avenue, but the daily protests showed no sign of ending.

Their most bitter criticism is directed at the president’s handling of the brief war last summer with Russia. The Georgian army was humiliated and the country lost territory as separatists and their Russian allies took full control of two breakaway Georgian regions.

Saakashvili, whose five-year term runs until 2013, told foreign reporters that he would not resign.

“It’s obvious the answer to this question is ‘no,’ ” he said in English. “It has always been ‘no,’ because that’s how it is under the constitution.”

Read more

More Below the Ad

Advertisement

TAGS: bush administration georgia president protest resignation rose revolution russia saakashvili tiblisi

Related Entries

November 8, 2009 Okinawans Step Up U.S. Base Protest
November 6, 2009 Happy Birthday, Pat Tillman
November 5, 2009 Conservatives Descend on Capitol for ‘House Call’ Protest
November 4, 2009 Where Was Obama When Maine Needed Him?
November 4, 2009 ‘Daily Show’: Plouffe Weighs In on Obama’s First Year

Email to a friend

Get truth delivered to
your inbox every week.

Previous item: French Parliament Nixes Web Piracy Bill

Next item: What You Dig

Elsewhere: .

Comments

Are you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig.

By geronimo, April 11 at 2:39 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Having been put in office by Empire-USA, puppet President Saakashvili will get the same treatment from Georgians as South Vietnam’s last puppet president, General Nguyen Van Thieu got from the Vietnamese people, namely, forced exile. If he’s lucky that is, because he could get much worse, considering how many Georgian lives were lost in last year’s ill-fated U.S. sponsored Georgian-Russo War that the puppet president gladly undetook on hehalf of his U.S. benefactors. How much worse? Execution, that’s how much worse, based on what happened to Norway’s Nazi installed puppet president Vidkun Quisling after Germany’s defeat in WW II.

Report this

By afif elias, April 11 at 11:33 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Saakashvili is a US puppet and supported by the NGO for the advancement of the imperlist capitlist folks. Those folks robbed the country and left his in bankrupt. He was promoted by NGO like criminal George Soros. Same goes for the Ukranian President who is corrupt and stole million of dollar from his people.

Report this

By Russian Paul, April 10 at 8:19 pm #

Saakashvili is a US puppet and a dangerous, despotic one. He started the conflict with Russia at the behest of Cheney and friends, but plays the innocent victim, the heroic, hardworking leader of a “fledgling democracy” and the MSM eats that up. The fact that Georgia might join NATO is extremely terrifying.

Report this