After the Revolution

Between 2003 and 2005, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan all overthrew their leaders with mass protests held after disputed elections. These movements were some of the most recent in a wave of mostly non-violent revolutions in post-communist societies in Europe and Asia. They have been collectively called color or flower revolutions after the symbols protesters chose to represent their causes.

The high hopes raised during these movements have faded as their heroes have fallen from grace and, in some cases, come to resemble the corrupt leadership they replaced. But a spirit of revolt still appears to be alive in the people of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan as they search for an end to poverty and corruption.

Georgia:

Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, who was propelled into office by the peaceful street protests of the Rose Revolution of 2003, was re-elected in a snap poll Jan. 5.

In September, Georgia’s former defense minister Irakli Okruashvili had accused Saakashvili of corruption, the oppression of the Georgian people and the plotting of multiple murders. In November protesters demanded that Saakashvili resign, but their marches were broken up by riot police. Police also shut down a popular television station run by a political opponent of the president.

International observers judged this month’s election to be fair but disapproved of the climate of the campaign. (BBC video: Georgian protest over election)

On Jan. 11, human rights activists claimed to have found proof of fraud in Saakashvili’s re-election — completed presidential ballots discarded in the trash outside the Central Election Commission. Saakashvili reportedly won 53 percent of the vote, narrowly averting a run-off poll against his rival Levan Gachechiladze, who purportedly won a quarter of the vote.

Ukraine:

On Dec. 18, Yulia Tymoshenko, a leader of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, was elected to her second term as prime minister of Ukraine. Fellow Orange Revolution leader and president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, supported her, though he had been the one who fired her from the position the first time around.

Yushchenko gained the presidency in 2005 after the Orange Revolution — despite being poisoned with dioxin during the campaign. But the shine started to wear off the Orange Revolution when Tymoshenko accused Yushchenko’s inner circle of corruption and was in return fired on charges of using her position to repay political favors. She teamed up with the man deposed from the presidency during the Orange Revolution, former prime minister Viktor Yanukovych, in an attempt to regain her position.

Yushchenko proposed to dissolve the parliament, claiming that individual members were being enticed to switched allegiances when only entire parties should be allowed to make such decisions. The court debated the constitutionality of the move for months but in December decided the new elections could be held.

Kyrgyzstan:

The day before Christmas, president Kurmanbek Bakiev’s Ak-Jol (Best Path) Party appointed Igor Chudinov, a former industry and trade minister, as prime minister of Kyrgyzstan. President Bakiev was brought to power by the Tulip Revolution of 2005. His party had won a sweeping victory on Dec. 16 in a widely protested election deemed substandard by Western monitors. Due to changes to the country’s constitution, Chudinov will have more power to make policy than recent prime ministers. Some critics have said Chudinov would have challenged Bakiev for the presidency had he not been an ethnic Russian who cannot fulfill the constitutional requirement of being able to speak Kyrgyz.

The new prime minister said he would focus on restoring the Kyrgyz economy with special attention paid to the tourism industry. Tourism officials recently dubbed Kyrgyzstan, a predominantly Muslim country, “the land of Santa Claus” after a Swedish engineering company declared it to be an ideal spot for St. Nick to locate his toy factory. (BBC audio clip: Kyrgyzstan: Santa’s new home)