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Last October the Catholicos-Patriach, Ilia II, referring to the events which led up to the war of August 2008, compared Mikheil Saakashvili to a man who repeatedly hit his head against a brick wall.

Coming from the head of the most respected institution in Georgia, the Orthodox Church and from the man who many Georgians regard as the personaification of national survival after centuries of Persian, Turkish and Russian rule, the words were a severe shock to the regime.

During the previous month the Catholicos-Patriarch had essentially been accused of being a dupe of Russian security services on Imedi TV which, as it is run by Saakashvili's former right-hand-man, Giorgi Arveladze, could be seen as the words of the president himself. More than that - someone, somewhere, decided to go further and started producing videos from distribution on the internet that attacked and mocked Ilia II in a variety of high personal ways.

When the videos became public knowledge in October the reaction in society was fierce, with public demonstrations in the capital.

Precisely who did that and what help - if any - they received from the state is impossible to know. Two people were arrested but had to be released after the authorities admitted that it was no crime to lampoon the head of the church.

But the real anger was not directed at the makers in any case but at the woman who distributed the videos: Tea Tutberidze.

Tutberidze's credentials as a supporter of Mikheil Saakashvili's blend of nationalsim and libertarianism were unimpeachable. She worked for the Liberty Institute, the equivalent of Petrograd Military Soviet of the Rose Revolution, except no one had shot these Old Bolsheviks on consolidating power (though as the Tea Tutberidze affair broke around their heads many in the regime may have wondered why not). She was also a pretty fearless campaigner against the church's encroachement of the civil powers' perogatives: something in which she had been broadly encouraged in the past.

Tutberidze was and is also, just like Saakashvili, an ardent nationalist. Not only had she, alongside Gigi Ugulava, been a key organiser of the student protests that had set the context for the Rose Revolution, she had also been an organiser of the subsequent round of protests in Adjara that destroyed Aslan Abashidze and had even spoken in public of doing the same in Tshkinvali. And she was convinced that the Patriarch was more than just a dupe of Russian security services - he was a former active collaborator with the KGB.

Tutberidze's profile, her forthright views and close association with the regime's upper echelons caused something close to panic at the upper levels of the Saakashvili administration. Having just seen off a round of mass public protest but also having done nothing to repair the devisions in Georgian society that had brought people on to the streets, the regime clearly felt it had now over-reached itself. The danger of a public scrap with the Patriarch was that he was the one man who could break the regime through words alone.

So recent months have seen the regime make a serious effort to court the church. Money has been handed over (supposedly to plant trees on church land) and the president has even called for the full implementation of the concordat signed in 2002 between his predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze (once the second most important athiest in the Soviet state but latterly a baptised believer), and the church. Previously the president had done little or nothing to chivy parliament to legislate to complete the deal's implementation, now he appears to say he wants to see it happen (though it is not happening, yet).

This last week, though, was perhaps the crowning point of the Patriarch's victory over the president. Power in Georgia rests very firmly on the foundation of control over the media. It was in a battle for control of a TV station that the president was prepared to authorise the use of extreme violence against the people of Georgia when he had special forces storm the Imedi TV station on 7 November 2007.

So it has been in the media that the Patriarch's triumph has been most apparent. It began at the starty of last week with Imedi's broadcast of "Time of Truth" featuring Tea Tutberidze. Why on earth she decided to go on the programme - which has become one of the key part's of the regime's information war with its internal enemies - is beyond understanding: but strong willed people who think they are untouchable because of their moral superiority are nothing new.

Tutberidze says she did not recant her earlier attacks on the Patriarch, but in the world of the electronic manipulation the audience were certainly left with the impression she had. Now she threatens to sue: she plainly has more faith in the Georgian courts than most.

Then, yesterday, the national TV channels reported on the Patriarch's honouring of opera singer Paata Burchuladze. At first sight there is nothing abnormal about this - Burchuladze is truly one of the world's leading opera performers and opera is both taken seriously and is highly popular in Georgia.

But it is not so long ago that Burchuladze was being treated as a non-person by the regime, and was being attacked in the media as useful idiot of the Kremlin.The reason was that he had taken the Patriarch's advice, and not that of the government, back in September and had gone to Moscow to sign at a charity concert.

Ads for that charity were no longer run by the national broadcasters and film of the concert was manipulated to make it look like it was an event not for orphaned children but in honour of the Russian army. Burchuladze was not the only one to be targeted, conductor Zaza Azmaiparashvili was also sacked for supporting Burchuladze charity (in a sign of the complete nature of Saakashvili's defeat he too has apparently been reinstated).

As far as we know Burchuladze held his ground: certainly there has been no indication that he has bent the knee to Saakashvili. So his sudden reappearence on the national media in the middle of January and the prominence given to the events of Sunday show, once again, that despite all the tough talk and swagger, the Saakashvili government is still concentrating, day after day, on its political survival in a society that may not yet trust the alternatives but is profoundly alienated from its rulers.