Thousands rally against Georgian leader

More than 10,000 Georgian opposition supporters rallied on Friday against President Mikheil Saakashvili, piling pressure on his government after its crushing military defeat by Russia. The rally in the capital Tbilisi marked the first anniversary of a crackdown on opposition demonstrators, when police fired rubber bullets, teargas and water cannon to end days of protests outside parliament.
Backed by the West, Saakashvili came to power in the 2003 "Rose Revolution" on a promise to consolidate democracy in the ex-Soviet republic, but the opposition says he has fallen far short of expectations. Western governments, including Saakashvili's main backer the United States, continue to call for greater freedom for the media, judiciary and political opponents.
"We are starting a new wave of civil confrontation, and we will not give up until new elections are called," Kakha Kukava, a leader of the opposition Conservative Party, told the crowd. Speakers demanded parliamentary and presidential elections in early 2009. They repeated accusations of election fraud. Voices of discontent have grown louder since a five-day war with Russia in August, when Moscow sent in tanks and troops to repel a Georgian military bid to retake the country's pro-Russian breakaway region of South Ossetia. "Saakashvili should step down," said pensioner Vakhtang Dolidze. "He was not elected by the people and brought shame on us by losing our territories in war."
Analysts and Western diplomats say Saakashvili's popularity appears for now undented, but warn that social discontent could spread as the economic fallout from the lost war and the global financial crisis kick in.
Saakashvili's critics say that by launching the assault on South Ossetia, which threw off Tbilisi's rule in the early 1990s, the president walked into a war Georgia could not possibly win or afford. The army was routed, the Kremlin recognised Georgia's two breakaway regions, and tens of thousands of Georgians displaced by the fighting remain homeless with winter approaching. Friday's protest snaked through the capital from parliament across the river to the presidential palace, where leaders handed over their demands.