GEORGIA: Six weeks after leading the "rose revolution" that toppled his mentor, Mr Mikhail Saakashvili became the new president of Georgia yesterday. He carries the hopes of a nation desperate to escape a decade of poverty, corruption and bloody separatism. Daniel McLaughlin, in Moscow, reports on the consummation of the "rose revolution".
The fiery rhetoric of the US-educated Mr Saakashvili, allied to the cool pragmatism of fellow lawyer Mrs Nino Burdzhanadze, steeled Georgians to demand the resignation of Mr Eduard Shevardnadze, the wily "white fox" who squandered his popularity by letting the economy stagnate and political friends pillage with impunity.
Mr Saakashvili's success in yesterday's presidential election hands him a chance to transform what used to be one of the Soviet Union's most prosperous republics. But he must overhaul the nation while pacifying breakaway regions and old master Moscow, as well as satisfying the demands of key financier Washington.
After casting his own ballot, Mr Saakashvili said he understood the scale of the task ahead.
"I am thinking about what concrete steps I can take to make life better," he told reporters. "People are longing for a better future." Mr Saakashvili (36) was an outspoken tyro in the cabinet of Mr Shevardnadze, a former Soviet foreign minister, and he outraged many colleagues by publicly brandishing pictures of luxury villas that he said fellow politicians were buying with ill-gotten gains.
He resigned as justice minister in protest at rampant government corruption and led the opposition movement with a pledge to weed out graft wherever he found it.
It is not hard to find in Georgia, a mountainous, 4.5 million-strong country, whose economic assets were sold off to well-connected businessmen in a string of dubious deals: a malaise endemic across the old Soviet Union.
Those businessmen will not bow meekly before the broom Mr Saakashvili promises to sweep through business, nor will politicians who got used to living well while most Georgians grew accustomed to unpaid wages, crumbling housing, power cuts and heating failure.
Looking around a Georgia dismembered by two civil wars a decade ago, Mr Saakashvili will not expect an easy ride from regional leaders either.
Thousands of people died when Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought free of Tbilisi's control, both, Georgians say, with considerable help from Russia.
The two regions officially boycotted yesterday's election, and insist that they will not give up their de-facto independence to the new regime in Tbilisi.
"We have nothing to do with the elections in Georgia. They are taking place in a different state," said Abkhaz Prime Minister Mr Raul Khadzhimba.
"We are not interested who comes to power in Tbilisi - Saakashvili or someone else." He said the Abkhaz government - which is not recognized internationally - would continue talks with whoever won the vote, as long as relations developed "as between two independent states." In South Ossetia, whose mainly Russian population is campaigning for rule from Moscow, only a few Georgian enclaves went to the polls.
"Despite the fact that no one in South Ossetia had any special sympathy for Shevardnadze, today residents here fear that people could come to power in Tbilisi who might not be friendly towards national minorities," Ms Irina Yanovska, head of South Ossetia's non-governmental Journalists for Human Rights group, told The Irish Times.
Mr Aslan Abashidze, pugnacious head of the restive Adzharia region and a fierce opponent of Mr Saakashvili, yesterday temporarily lifted the state of emergency he declared after the coup. He also allowed polling booths to open in Adzharia, contrary to a previous threat, but told his supporters not to vote.
Leaders of the three regions met shortly after the coup to discuss their approach to its leaders, and their choice of Moscow as the venue for negotiations can have left Mr Saakashvili in no doubt as to whom else they consider a key player in Georgian affairs.
Russia has been cool on the coup but keen to stay engaged, as evinced by the presence of Foreign Minister Mr Igor Ivanov at the talks in Tbilisi that finally convinced Mr Shevardnadze to resign.
Moscow sees Washington's controlling hand behind the affair, citing striking parallels with the ultimately peaceful ousting of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, and the presence in Belgrade then and Tbilisi now of US ambassador Mr Richard Miles.
Russia has accused Georgia of allowing Chechen rebels to hide and re-equip in the Pankisi Gorge, a remote region bordering Chechnya that Tbilisi does not control.
Russia also has a stranglehold over Georgian energy, and has dimmed the lights and occasionally turned them off altogether as a reminder of unpaid power bills.
Mr Saakashvili and his team have pledged to work towards good relations with Russia, but their inclination in clearly westward.
He was educated at New York's Columbia University, speaks English and French, and has a Dutch wife.
He also knows that, with a $1.7 billion debt burden and more than half the population living on less than $5 a day, no one can help better than the US, which is already Georgia's biggest supplier of aid.
For Washington's part, a stable Georgia is vital to safeguard a multi-billion dollar US investment in a pipeline to carry Caspian Sea oil across the volatile Caucasus to Turkey, and then on to Western markets. It also gives the Pentagon a strategic ally at the bridge between Europe and the Middle East.
Calling his protégé by the affectionate "Misha" yesterday, Mr Shevardnadze reminded Mr Saakashvili that he has plenty to consider as the celebrations rage. "Enough of populism," Mr Shevardnadze said, after voting for the man who dethroned him. "There is a lot of work to be done."