Tbilisi - For more than three months, the broad avenue running in front of the Georgian parliament was blocked by makeshift cells, occupied round-the-clock by demonstrators opposing Mikheil Saakashvili's presidency. As occupants dwindled to a core of die-hard activists, opposition leader Salome Zourabichvili finally announced the end of the blockade on the city's Rustaveli Avenue on July 13, saying the cells had "exhausted their time."
The protesters' ability to block a six-lane traffic artery through central Tbilisi arguably said more about government tolerance than the demonstrators' clout, but served as an awkward reminder that Saakashvili has his critics.
The blockade was set up after thousands of people took to the streets in April, dissatisfied with Saakashvili's handling of the war with Russia last summer and demanding his resignation.
But by early July, passers-by registered little interest in what was left of the demonstration, which arguably hit taxi drivers hardest.
Despite the war and Georgia's economic woes, Saakashvili still enjoys a broad support base in a country where people prefer their leaders to be bold and brash. This is particularly so in the rural areas, where there is little access to independent media and governors are appointed by the ruling party.
In contrast, Georgia's opposition parties are a fractured group of shifting alliances, unable to rally around a single candidate who might challenge Saakashvili's charisma.
The most notable figure on the political scene is Irakli Alasania, a smooth, young diplomat who represented Georgia at the United Nations before he joined the opposition last December.
"There is a huge part of the population which is not satisfied with the way things are going in Georgia, and they are blaming Saakashvili for the major failures in policies, in the war, in the economy," Alasania said.
But change alone was not enough as people were looking for tangible alternatives, the 35-year-old added. Alasania has just launched his own party, Our Georgia, offering pragmatic solutions to the political instability that he says people feared more than anything.
First and foremost, he said, the government needed to start opening up political space for the opposition and set the arena for fair, democratic elections. "In that case of course, we see Saakashvili as a partner," he said.
Alasania said Saakashvili was no longer able to achieve the goals he had set for himself when he came into power. "He cannot unify Georgia, he cannot get Georgia into NATO."
"The only way he can really be part of the history in Georgia is to help build democratic institutions, to help transfer peacefully the power to another political force," he added.
Opposition politicians are united in little other than their criticism of Saakashvili's style of government, which has concentrated power around the president. This, they argue, gave rise to the errors of judgement which led the country into the war with Russia.
Economic Development Minister Lasa Zhvania disagrees. "He (Saakashvili) is the leader, and he is a good leader," he said, adding, "never can exist alone ... he always consults, even on tiny things."
"In short, Saakashvili is a good team worker," the minister said. "He consults and he decides, with a majority of the vote," Zhvania said.
Georgia's Public Defender Sozar Subari says it was a mistake for Saakashvili's government to centralize power, in order to push through much-needed reforms. "The main problem is that all decisions are made by one person and his friends," the ombudsman said.
Subari, whose role it is to monitor human rights abuses and protect citizens from an overbearing state, says his reports and recommendations are often disregarded by parliament. What was missing, he said, was political will.
"By law the courts are independent, but most of them are absolutely based on the prosecutors or on politics," Subari added.
The ombudsman says he was close to Saakashvili's inner circle when he was appointed. He has since been criticized for "politicizing" his role, which frequently involves defending opponents of the state.
Subari described cases of opposition politicians arrested on spurious drug charges, and said beatings and torture still took place in police stations, although there was a vast improvement since he came to office in 2004.
"The people who are doing such crimes, they must be punished," he said, directly implicating Saakashvili. "He knows everything."
Mikheil Makharadze, who heads the regional parliament in the self- proclaimed autonomous republic of Adjara in western Georgia, thinks the problems lie at a more fundamental level.
"We have such a sickness in society that we turn against any government that we choose," Makharadze said. The philosophy professor said people were unwilling to wait for an elected government to do its work.
"We are not used to it," Makharadze said, comparing present-day Georgia to Europe's burgeoning democracies centuries ago. "Maybe with time we will overcome this," he suggested.
