The Case Against Saakashvili

It’s temping to see Georgia’s crusading former president as the solution to all of Ukraine’s problems. Here’s why caution is in order.

BY ADRIAN KARATNYCKY-JANUARY 20, 2016

Mikheil Saakashvili is back. Having left his native Georgia after voters repudiated his party and his term as president expired, Saakashvili has revived his political fortunes on a much larger playing field — Ukraine. The former Georgian president has taken Ukrainian citizenship and rapidly emerged as one of the country’s most popular political figures. And with good reason: he has bravado; he is a vast storehouse of energy; and he is tempting Ukrainians with an easy solution to poverty and corruption — namely, him.

Saakashvili’s Ukrainian career began in May 2015, when the country’s president, Petro Poroshenko, appointed him governor of the Odessa region, which is renowned for its corruption and organized crime. A master of public relations, Saakashvili threw himself into this role, promising to clean up Odessa and, in particular, its notoriously corrupt port. As part of that effort, he fired a number of top- and mid-level officials and replaced them with young, Western-educated Ukrainians, inexperienced but telegenic young activists, and a small coterie of political loyalists from Georgia.

Soon, however, Saakashvili began to test the limits of what could be attained in Odessa, and started to argue that his battle against corruption was being stymied by the central government in Kiev. He also began to spend less time in his region and more in the capital, where his infectious spirit and charisma added a new vigor to Ukraine’s popular and boisterous political talk shows. Even as he vociferously denied having any higher political ambitions,Saakashvili was clearly setting his sights on Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk and entering the arena of national politics. 
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