SAAKASHVILI PLOTS RETURN TO BROOKLYN – NY TIMES
11:17 * 20.09.14
By Jason Horowitz
At the Smorgasburg food fair in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Mikheil
Saakashvili motored in fluorescent green sneakers among bearded men
with tattoos and women in revealing overalls. They lined up for Cheese
Pops,Dun-Well Doughnuts and other local delicacies.
He ordered a fresh coconut.
“My friend, one of the biggest sheikhs of the United Arab Emirates,
gaveGeorgia 20,000 palm trees,” Mr Saakashvili, the former president
of Georgia, said as he dropped a straw in the machete-opened fruit
and emptied its water with a few deep pulls. “As a personal gift.”
Mr Saakashvili is in self-imposed exile on North Seventh Street —
plotting a triumphant return, even as his steep fall from grace serves
as a cautionary tale to the many American government officials who
had hoped he would be a model exporter of democracy to former Soviet
republics.
Since leaving office last November, this George W Bush favorite —
whose confrontation with President Vladimir V Putin of Russia led to
a disastrous war in 2008 — has commandeered his uncle’s apartment
in a tower on the Williamsburg waterfront, where he luxuriates in the
neighborhood’s time-honored tradition of mysteriously sourced wealth.
When not lingering in cafes, riding his bike across the bridge or
spending stag evenings with friends on the Wythe Hotel rooftop, Mr
Saakashvili seizes on the Ukrainian conflict and his experience with
Mr Putin’s wrath as a lifeline back to political relevance.
“It’s the end of Putin,” Mr. Saakashvili, 46, said of Russia’s
aggression in Ukraine, the topic of discussion on Thursday as its
president, Petro O. Poroshenko, met in Washington with President
Obama and congressional leaders. Mr. Saakashvili called Mr. Putin’s
actions “very, very similar” to those in Georgia. “I think he walked
into trap.”
But Mr Saakashvili, considerably plumper than when he was in power,
argues that the conflict should also mark a reappraisal of his own
reputation as a reckless leader whose peaceful Rose Revolution and
commitment to reform were eclipsed by years of riding roughshod over
opponents, bending the rule of law and provoking Mr Putin into a
war that resulted in the death, displacement and impoverishment of
thousands of Georgians. “It should be revisited,” he said.
Mr Saakashvili said that while he had a “normal life” in Brooklyn,
he considered himself a big deal in Eastern Europe, pointing out that
on a recent trip to Albania “they shut down traffic for us and our
20-car escort.”
Mr Saakashvili’s personal rehabilitation project is complicated by
his eroded popularity back home and charges filed against him by
Georgian prosecutors of human rights violations and embezzlement
of government funds. He shrugs off the prosecutors as politically
motivated puppets of his nemesis, the billionaire and former Prime
Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili. Some of Mr Saakashvili’s critics agree
that the charges say as much about the current Georgian government’s
hunger for revenge as they do about him.
For now Mr Saakashvili is writing a memoir, delivering “very
well-paid” speeches, helping start up a Washington-based think tank and
visiting old boosters like Senator John McCain and Victoria Nuland,
the assistant secretary of state. He said he was in the process of
changing his tourist status here to a work visa and in the meantime
is enjoying the bars and cafes of his adopted homeland. On his roof
deck, with sweeping views of Manhattan, he has entertained David H
Petraeus, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and
is expecting Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, at the end
of the month. Usually, a cousin mans the grill, along with the chef
from Fabbrica, the neighboring Italian restaurant opposite a CVS. Like
those chain drugstores, glassy high-rises and Eurocentric nightclubs,
Mr. Saakashvili is evidence of Williamsburg’s steady transition to
a playground for moneyed out-of-towners.
“I used to look at this place from Manhattan, it was such a pity,
it was mafia, a place where hit men dump bodies,” he said, recalling
his time in the 1990s as a Columbia University Law School student. Now
he sees “a jazzy atmosphere” rife with energy and new construction.
“Williamsburg is part of the democratic transformation,” he said.
Read more on The New York Times website.
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