Former Georgian leader revels in a new battleground

Tom Parfitt Kiev
Published at 12:01AM, September 14 2015

Mikhail Saakashvili is not afraid of a scrap. A decade ago he barged his way into a session of Georgia’s parliament with thousands of supporters clutching roses, causing President Shevardnadze to flee with his bodyguards.
Within two months of that Rose Revolution, Mr Saakashvili was president. After two terms in office he went to the United States amid allegations of embezzlement and human rights violations that he claims were trumped up.
Now he’s back in the political fray — and seemingly thirsty for power.
This time, the field of battle is not the rugged peaks of Georgia but the cornfields and coasts of Ukraine.
In a surprise choice, President Poroshenko of Ukraine appointed Mr Saakashvili governor of Odessa region in May, giving him Ukrainian citizenship on the same day. The former Georgian leader quickly earned praise for his promise to throttle corruption in the strategic port.
This month, he signalled wider ambitions, with a stinging verbal attack on the government of the prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, that has provoked fears of a collapse in the ruling coalition. Mr Saakashvili accused Mr Yatsenyuk of stalling on essential reforms in debt-ridden and war-scarred Ukraine, while protecting “oligarchs” who stand in the shadows. At the weekend he issued a new salvo.
“The government needs to jump-start reforms and do it fast, we’re running out of time,” he told The Times. “Public service is disintegrating. People are not getting salaries any more. They are basically working for free because what they are paid is purely symbolic.”
Oligarch control over prosecutors, media, politicians and supervisory boards in state companies constitute “a parallel state which is much more powerful than the existing one”, he said. Mr Yatsenyuk’s problem was that he suggested “things are fine”, said Mr Saakashvili. “Things are not fine.”
Ukraine’s economy shrank by 15 per cent in the second quarter amid a punishing war with Russian-backed separatists in the eastern Donbas region.
Many Ukrainians suspect Mr Poroshenko now hopes to oust the unpopular Mr Yatsenyuk and replace him with Mr Saakashvili, an old friend who studied as an undergraduate in Ukraine and speaks the language.
Mr Saakashvili, an energetic if portly 47-year-old, denies any aspiration to take the premier’s role but says the government needs a “total reset” and suggests he would be better placed to withstand arm-twisting from oligarchs.
“When I go after [the oligarchs] I know what it means, it means that they try to discredit you through their media, MPs who are on their payroll start to attack you. I don’t know if everyone can stomach that, including the prime minister, it’s not an easy thing to handle,” he said.
One tycoon, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, called Mr Saakashvili a “snotty drug addict” and a “dog without a muzzle” last week after the Georgian suggested he sought favours from Mr Yatsenyuk.
In a speech on Saturday, Mr Yatsenyuk said the government was raising wages and pensions, closing tax loopholes and tackling corruption. He spoke at the Yalta European Strategy conference in Kiev, a glitzy meeting of diplomats, politicians and security experts run by Viktor Pinchuk, the tycoon. Many delegates, however, were talking of Mr Saakashvili’s expected tilt at the top.
The former Georgian president’s return is Lazarus-like. A year ago, he was a forlorn figure living in Brooklyn, US, and riding his bicycle, exiled and forgotten. Serhiy Leshchenko, an MP in Mr Poroshenko’s parliamentary bloc, thinks that Mr Saakashvili would make an ideal premier.
“He is an outsider, he does not have these corrupt links in Ukraine,” he said.

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