JohnCenaFan28
04-09-2009, 07:37 PM
Tens of thousands of protesters thronged Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, today for the start of mass demonstrations against Mikheil Saakashvili, the country's flamboyant but increasingly unpopular President.
Opposition leaders had promised to rally at least 100,000 supporters and to carry on their protests until Mr Saakashvili resigns and calls an early election. Independent estimates put the crowd surging today down Rustaveli Avenue, the city's main thoroughfare, and around the Soviet-era parliament building at at least 60,000 today, although the opposition claimed that 150,000 people were there.
"We have no other way out but to stand here until the end, until the Judas of Georgian politics resigns," Levan Gachechiladze, a former presidential candidate, told the crowd.
The President, a US-trained lawyer, has come under increasing pressure since Georgia's disastrous war with Russia last year, which even some of Mr Saakashvili's key allies accused him of mishandling and for which, they say, he should take responsibility.
He is also accused of betraying the values of the 2003 Rose Revolution that swept him to power by persecuting critics, stifling the media and concentrating power in his own hands.
The protesters outside parliament raised their hands to endorse a statement urging Mr Saakashvili to stand down. Organisers have given him 24 hours in which to reply, before announcing further action.
"Today is referendum day in Georgia," said Irakly Alasania, a former Georgian ambassador to the United Nations, who broke with Mr Saakashvili after the war and is now an opposition leader.
On a warm day and under an overcast sky, protesters of all ages and classes gathered. They included parents with children and many of the younger protesters who powered the Rose Revolution.
Initially at least the protest was raucous but good natured, although the sheer variety of the flags that they carried showed how fragmented the Georgian opposition remains – united only by the desire to see Mr Saakashvili forced from office.
Both the Government and opposition leaders have promised to keep the demonstrations peaceful, unlike a similar protest two years ago when riot police used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowds. The police presence at today's demonstration was so low key as to be all but invisible.
A leading Georgian opposition party nevertheless claimed that dozens of its activists had been arrested overnight to prevent them from attending the rally.
"Sixty of our supporters were arrested, they were taken from their homes," Khatuna Ivanishvili, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Movement – United Georgia party led by the former parliament speaker Nino Burjanadze, said. "Obviously this happened to stop them from coming to the protest."
The rally is being held on the 20th anniversary of a crackdown by the Soviet Red Army on a pro-independence protest in Tbilisi in which 20 demonstrators were killed. That crackdown helped to galvanise Georgia's struggle for self-determination.
This morning, Mr Saakashvili and opposition leaders gathered to commemorate the massacre. They lit candles and prayed as Patriach Ilia II, the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, led a religious ceremony.
Mr Saakashvili, who won a second five-year term in a snap election last year, used the occasion to call for national unity. "However different our political views and positions, we have a common motherland and we have to work hard together for freedom and a united country," he said.
-TimesOnline
Opposition leaders had promised to rally at least 100,000 supporters and to carry on their protests until Mr Saakashvili resigns and calls an early election. Independent estimates put the crowd surging today down Rustaveli Avenue, the city's main thoroughfare, and around the Soviet-era parliament building at at least 60,000 today, although the opposition claimed that 150,000 people were there.
"We have no other way out but to stand here until the end, until the Judas of Georgian politics resigns," Levan Gachechiladze, a former presidential candidate, told the crowd.
The President, a US-trained lawyer, has come under increasing pressure since Georgia's disastrous war with Russia last year, which even some of Mr Saakashvili's key allies accused him of mishandling and for which, they say, he should take responsibility.
He is also accused of betraying the values of the 2003 Rose Revolution that swept him to power by persecuting critics, stifling the media and concentrating power in his own hands.
The protesters outside parliament raised their hands to endorse a statement urging Mr Saakashvili to stand down. Organisers have given him 24 hours in which to reply, before announcing further action.
"Today is referendum day in Georgia," said Irakly Alasania, a former Georgian ambassador to the United Nations, who broke with Mr Saakashvili after the war and is now an opposition leader.
On a warm day and under an overcast sky, protesters of all ages and classes gathered. They included parents with children and many of the younger protesters who powered the Rose Revolution.
Initially at least the protest was raucous but good natured, although the sheer variety of the flags that they carried showed how fragmented the Georgian opposition remains – united only by the desire to see Mr Saakashvili forced from office.
Both the Government and opposition leaders have promised to keep the demonstrations peaceful, unlike a similar protest two years ago when riot police used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowds. The police presence at today's demonstration was so low key as to be all but invisible.
A leading Georgian opposition party nevertheless claimed that dozens of its activists had been arrested overnight to prevent them from attending the rally.
"Sixty of our supporters were arrested, they were taken from their homes," Khatuna Ivanishvili, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Movement – United Georgia party led by the former parliament speaker Nino Burjanadze, said. "Obviously this happened to stop them from coming to the protest."
The rally is being held on the 20th anniversary of a crackdown by the Soviet Red Army on a pro-independence protest in Tbilisi in which 20 demonstrators were killed. That crackdown helped to galvanise Georgia's struggle for self-determination.
This morning, Mr Saakashvili and opposition leaders gathered to commemorate the massacre. They lit candles and prayed as Patriach Ilia II, the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, led a religious ceremony.
Mr Saakashvili, who won a second five-year term in a snap election last year, used the occasion to call for national unity. "However different our political views and positions, we have a common motherland and we have to work hard together for freedom and a united country," he said.
-TimesOnline