This week Vice President Joseph Biden is visiting Georgia, and in honor of being graced with his first high ranking visitor in quite a long time, President Mikheil Saakashvili has released an early copy of his speech to the Wall Street Journal, in which he intends to a new power-sharing agreement and an offer to make elections “more democratic.”  Things in Georgia have been drifting in the wrong direction for quite a long time now since the ravages of the Russian invasion, with the Saakashvili administration firing some of the best and brightest individuals in the government, and grinding down the stable of advisers and ministers to only the most incompetant and blindly loyal.  The opposition, which is split between the serious (led by Irakli Alasania) and the fake (more related to Nino Burjanadze and others), has been undetered after months of bitter protest.

One sure hopes that Saakashvili gathers some sense before Georgia loses its democracy – as that’s about all they have left.  For as bad as this government has become, it is still important that the administration complete a term before getting swiftly voted out in a fully transparent process.  The country badly needs a stable democratic record of complete presidential terms as much as it needs new leadership.  The test will be to see whether Saak’s lovely speech will ever bear any fruits once Biden has left Tbilisi.

Until then, the lame duck will looks to keep swimming and keep his head above water.  From the WSJ:

The exclusively domestic content of Monday’s speech underlines the new, less-promising political reality Georgia faces after Russian forces defeated its army last summer, allowing two breakaway Georgian republics to declare their independence.