Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF version

It now seems clear what we can expect from President Saakashvili's speech to parliament, later today (18.00 GET, 14.00 GMT, 09.00 EST) - an unspecific but blood curdling denunciation of "traitors" and "collaborators", a series of false claims about corruption and economic progress, threats of war and then idle baosting about his own commitment to democracy.

Why do we know this is what we are likely to get?

Because it is what we have got in the last two weeks.

• Yesterday we got the rhetoric about collaborators and traitors - though, as usual, Saakashvili was careful to keep his attacks as unspecific as possible - because the last thing he actually wants to have to do is engage in a concrete debate about individuals and policies (though we should note that he is opening the Upper Lars checkpoint on 1 March - no one expects us to believe this is happening without someone talking to the Russian side, do they?);
• The false claims about corruption and economic progress (such as the claim that Georgia is richer than Ukraine as measured by GDP per head) are made more or less every week;
• Threats of war and its inevitability have become a feature of Saakashvili's rhetoric since the early winter and were again repeated, if in a somewhat toned-down way, in London last week;
• Idle boasts about democracy are what Mikheil Saakashvili does best.