Georgian president announces reforms

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Georgia’s president announced a major government overhaul Tuesday, calling it a “Second Rose Revolution” to guard against Russian encroachment in the wake of last month’s war between the two countries.

In a speech before the U.N. General Assembly, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said expanded democratic initiatives will include stronger checks and balances in government, more independence for Parliament and the judiciary, and increased funding for opposition parties.

“We will, in short, fight the specter of aggression and authoritarianism with the most potent weapons in our arsenal — namely, our commitment to ever-expanding freedoms within our borders,” Saakashvili said. “This amounts to nothing less than a ‘Second Rose Revolution.’”

Saakashvili said opposition parties would have greater access to the airwaves. He pledged that the nation’s laws would be strengthened, too, by introducing “enhanced” due process, jury trials and lifetime judicial appointments. Finally, he promised to “expand and deepen protections of private property.”

Georgia’s first “Rose Revolution” in 2003 displaced President Eduard Shevardnadze without bloodshed.

While the first revolution was about heading off “a threat from within by reinventing a failed state riddled by corruption, our second revolution must be even more focused, as now we face an even greater challenge, one that comes from the outside,” Saakashvili added.

Much of the Georgian leader’s speech Tuesday focused on countering what he called “the violence and tactics that subverted state sovereignty in Georgia” which, if unchecked, “will spread to other parts of the world.”

War erupted between Georgia and Russia last month when Georgia launched an attack to regain control over South Ossetia. Russia sent in troops who quickly pushed deep into Georgia.