Shev's Last Stand?

Shevardnadze must go! was the insistent refrain of thousands of protesters who camped outside the Georgian parliament in downtown Tbilisi for nearly two weeks.

The demonstrators said President Eduard Shevardnadze's government has become despotic and corrupt and that the Nov. 2 parliamentary elections were rigged. While the crowds chanted, Aslan Abashidze — the pro-Moscow leader of Ajaria, a largely autonomous region of Georgia — slipped off to Moscow, where he met the new Kremlin Chief of Staff Dmitry Medvedev.

Shevardnadze has allied himself with his former political foe Abashidze, and the opposition fears...