Gia Maisashvili, an economist who was once an ally of Mikheil Saakashvili, said on June 20 he would run in the 2008 presidential election.
“Our goal will be to create a Georgia full of opportunities based on a knowledge economy, responsibility and solidarity,” he told Tbilisi-based Imedi television.
“Georgia has a mission to become a City on a Hill, which will be a candle in the service of the rest of the world. I am only a simple tool on the way towards this mission… I have this mission and I have to fulfill this mission,” he added.
Maisashvili, who lived in the United States, was an economist at Enron, but quit the corporation in 2001.
He returned to Georgia on the eve of the 2003 Rose Revolution and became an economics consultant to the then opposition leader Saakashvili. He, however, split with Saakashvili shortly after the revolution.
He then set up a Leadership School with the aim, as the school's website puts it, of fostering the emergence of “a new generation of skilled, wise and courageous leaders.”
Maisashvili has never been associated with any political party. He did, however, establish what was meant to be a grassroots movement, Government of the Future. It has never been politically active.