Stephen Lendman

In 2003, Washington’s color revolution elevated him to power illegitimately.

Familiar tactics included election rigging, organized street protests, and major media disinformation. Once empowered, neoliberal harshness followed.

State enterprises were privatized. Georgia’s civil service was gutted. Business-friendly tax cuts were enacted. Widespread corruption gamed the system for personal advantage. Georgia became a ruthless police state. Heavy-handed repression replaced rule of law principles. Legitimate opposition was crushed.

Saakashvili’s tenure included suspicious deaths, disappearances, mass arrests, detentions, torture, loss of civil liberties, mass media control, and allying with Washington’s imperial agenda.

Electorally defeated in October 2013, he allied with US supported Ukrainian putschists replacing democracy with fascist dictatorship.

Illegitimate US-installed president Poroshenko appointed him a non-staff advisor, then Odessa’s illegitimate governor, ruling by state terror the way he operated in Georgia.

He left the country in late 2013 a wanted man, charged with corruption and abuse of power. An international warrant was issued for his arrest.

While empowered, he remained a US favorite. Last July, he resigned as Odessa’s governor, his Ukrainian citizenship revoked after calling Kiev an “oligarchic regime.”

On September 10, stripped of his citizenship, he entered Ukraine, accompanied by opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, a former convicted felon.

Ukrainian police opened a criminal investigation on charges of “illegal smuggling of people through Ukraine’s state border (and) attack(ing) border guards during performance of their duties” - absurd charges typical of police state governance.

Saakashvili is stateless. He entered Ukraine to regain his citizenship. He relinquished his Georgian citizenship when appointed Odessa governor in 2015.

A potential Poroshenko rival makes him persona non grata in Ukraine. Now he risks deportation to Georgia where he’s charged with corruption and abuse of power.

In either country, he could be imprisoned where he belongs.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

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