Uprising topples a Soviet survivor

Shevardnadze steps aside as crowds march on his palace. By Julius Strauss in Tbilisi.

24 November 2003

EDUARD Shevardnadze, the last of Europe's ruling Communist strongmen, was forced to resign as president of Georgia last night after furious protesters reached the gates of his hill-top residence.

News of the "velvet revolution" attracted 100,000 Georgians on to the streets of the capital Tbilisi, where they danced, sang and cheered.

Mr Shevardnadze was blamed by many Georgians for allowing corruption to infest the country while most of its people fell into poverty and despair, living with sporadic electricity and water.

That anger fed the uprising that began on Nov 2 when voting for a new parliament was held, amid widespread complaints of ballot-box stuffing and other abuses. Opposition forces led by Mikhail Saakashvili began daily protests outside parliament that attracted thousands of people demanding the elections be annulled or that Mr Shevardnadze, the former Soviet Union foreign minister, resign.

Mr Shevardnadze, called repeatedly for "dialogue", but gave no sign that he would make concessions.

For days the 75-year-old president, once the darling of the West for his role in the peaceful break-up of the Soviet Union, had clung to power.

But his leading officials began to desert him and on Saturday he narrowly escaped the storming of the president's office and the parliament when bodyguards dragged him away from invading protesters.

Last night, with crowds threatening to overwhelm his palace, he was persuaded to step aside, apparently by Igor Ivanov, the Russian foreign minister, who spent the day trying to mediate a peaceful way out of the crisis.

Speaking on television, Mr Shevardnadze said: "I realised that what is happening may end with spilled blood if I use my rights.

"I have never betrayed my people and I have decided that I should resign."

Mr Saakashvili, who led the storming of parliament on Saturday, greeted the decision with praise and offered personal guarantees for the safety of the president and his family.

He said: "The president has accomplished a courageous act. By his resignation, he avoided spilling blood in the country. History will judge him kindly."

Nino Burdzhanadze, Georgia's most prominent female politician and the parliamentary speaker, was named as acting president. The opposition said fresh elections would be held within 45 days.

Mr Shevardnadze was reported to be staying in Georgia last night, but Germany, where an aide is reported to own a large house in Baden-Baden, offered him a safe haven.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's spokesman said: "If Eduard Shevardnadze wants to come to Germany he would be welcome on account of all that he did to help with the unification of Germany."

The resignation came as it seemed that Georgia, an important western ally in the region and where BP is building a $2 billion oil pipeline, might slide into civil war.

In the early hours yesterday rumours circulated that the government was ready to use tanks to crush the protests.

Mr Shevardnadze warned protesters that if they did not vacate parliament and the presidency he would clear them out by force. He declared a state of emergency and issued arrest warrants against the three main opposition leaders.

But as his threats increased, the protests only grew larger and more determined.

They spilled out of Tbilisi's main Rustaveli boulevard into surrounding streets and squares.

By mid-afternoon tens of thousands more protesters from every ethnicity and region had arrived in cars, buses and minivans, vowing to stay until the president resigned.

Nargeza Danelia, a 50-year-old music teacher who had travelled from the Black Sea coast several hours away, was among them.

"Shevardnadze is the devil," she said. "We thought he was dead yesterday, but today he is still breathing.

"But now he must go. All he has left are his personal guards. The army and the police are with us."

As if to prove her point, dozens of soldiers, who had abandoned their guns and deserted their barracks, began arriving at the demonstrations on foot to huge cheers and applause.

By nightfall the crowd had swollen to critical size and police and soldiers were openly fraternising.

One policeman said: "I have been ordered to defend this building. But I will never shoot at my own people, they are my brothers and sisters."

All that stood between the protesters and Mr Shevardnadze's residence, where he was holed up with his most faithful cronies, was a thin cordon of special forces.

But by mid-evening even they had lost the will to resist.

Then word came that 30 years of Mr Shevardnadze's rule was at an end.

Addressing a nation baying for his demise, he told them he was "going home".