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On 19 December the botched demolition of the Memorial of Glory in Kutaisi, reportedly executed on political orders, killed two bystanders, a mother and her eight year old daughter. In Denmark for the UN climate summit, President Mikheil Saakashvili rushed home to take charge of the crisis. But since then he has not had the courage to visit...

Today the president made announcements about Kutaisi and appointed a new govenor of the Imereri region in which Georgia's second city stands - he sacked the previous post-holder in the immediate aftermath of the demolition.

But like a man driven into exile by a popular uprising, he made the announcements not in the city of Kutaisi or even somewhere else in the region, but safely over the border in Batumi.

The Human Rights Centre say that anger in Kutaisi about the circumstances of the demolition is growing: the president's refusal to travel there suggests he fears that it will be aimed at him as the man who centralied power in his own hands and so who has ultimate responsibility for just about every major act of the Georgian state.