Tbilisi, Georgia
Thousands of Georgians poured into the streets of Tbilisi this week, demanding that President Eduard Shevardnadze step down. “We will not leave until Shevardnadze has gone and freedom has triumphed,” Mikhail Saakashvili, the young, charismatic opposition leader, said to cheering crowds. The protesters claim the president rigged the recent parliamentary elections to favor his party, and international election observers agree. But Shevardnadze refused to go quietly and cautioned that protesters were risking civil war. The warning was seen as a veiled threat of a military crackdown. Shevardnadze came to power in 1992 after military clashes that ousted the former Soviet republic’s first democratically elected leader.
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