The hunger strike of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who secretly entered the country, was detained on October 1 and imprisoned in the city of Rustavi, continues to keep the former cradle of the 2003 Rose Revolution, the first color revolution in the post-Soviet space, in suspense. 

In another historical era, who stormed the Georgian government with roses at the ready and managed to expel the patriarch of Georgian politics Eduard Shevardnadze from power, after 18 years the leader of the Georgian "flower revolution" was forced not to attack, but to keep a perimeter defense - in a prison cell, starving for three weeks in protest against his detention.

Who would have thought that everything would turn out like this in the end! 

A council of doctors this week warned: the situation is critical, in such a state Mikheil Saakashvili will not last long, urgent hospitalization is needed.

At the beginning of the hunger strike, ex-President Saakashvili, who ordered several cans of honey and natural juice into his cell, and who did not manage to finish eating the khinkali who were in his Tbilisi apartment at the time of his arrest, must have wanted to return to his Georgian apartment now.

Wave a glass, having a snack not on prison honey, but on something more suitable.

Khinkali with vodka is just that.

But the bridges have been burned, and he cannot yield to the regime of his political opponents from the Georgian Dream party, which has arrested him.

And honey and juice seem to be running out.

What to do?

The heroine of another “velvet revolution” in the post-Soviet space, the Ukrainian “orange princess” Yulia Tymoshenko, raised her voice in defense of Mikhail Saakashvili. “Dear Misha, I know very well that while in prison, a hunger strike is almost the only form of protest. I also perfectly understand your motives, why you were forced to do this, but I ask you to stop the hunger strike. Your country needs you alive, healthy and strong, ”Yulia Tymoshenko said in her video message. “I myself have gone through political repression and I know very well what it means to be in political prison. I would never wish this on anyone. It is unfair to deprive a person of freedom because of political strife and views, ”she added.

While passions flare up around Saakashvili, there are reports that a separate floor is being prepared for the third president of Georgia in the Vivamed clinic in Tbilisi, where he can be transferred from the Rustavi prison from day to day.

But Saakashvili does not give up and does not give his consent yet.

It seems that he believes that the wave of popular anger that erupted after his arrest will sweep away the current Georgian regime and the Georgian revolution 2.0 will once again raise him to the very top of power.

“I call on the special forces and policemen not to disperse the peaceful protests of their people, the people they must defend,” Mikheil Saakashvili wrote on his Facebook page this week (which means, despite extreme exhaustion, he can bang on the keyboard!). 

Recalling that, according to his estimates, “60 thousand people who demanded the liberation of the country, and not only his personal release” gathered at a rally of his supporters in Tbilisi, the third president of Georgia passed a sentence to the current authorities: “Such a gathering of people is an unmistakable sign, that the regime has no support in society. " 

Probably, a new “velvet revolution” in Georgia, if it took place, could be called not a “revolution of roses” (roses have withered), but, say, “a revolution of honey”.

Why not?

Honey could become a symbol of non-violent protest against the arbitrary rule of the regime (Mahatma Gandhi used salt in India, but you cannot engage in political plagiarism).

It would be a creative move from the point of view of political technologies.

For example, giving each protester a can of honey - let them hand it over to the riot police, if they are long-legged girls of model appearance - generally super.

The Ukrainian lover of Saakashvili - the beautiful deputy Liza Yasko, "Miss Rada", may go ahead.

Either let the protesters pour this honey on the law enforcement officers' heads, or let them break jars of honey under their feet so that they stick in it, flounder, fall and run shamefully under the onslaught of the righteous popular anger.

However, honey in this story takes on a completely different symbolic meaning.

And how can we not recall the honey badger - a unique predatory mammal of the weasel family, which has a reputation as the main scumbag of the animal world, for which there are no rules and red lines.

The honey badger who loves honey and destroys hives is able to eat everything that moves and does not move, that has died and decomposed, emitting a fetid odor (in the case of Miho, I am silent about the famous eating of a tie - everyone remembers him this way). He can recklessly rush at all representatives of the animal world, including formidable tigers and lions. And even the bite of a king cobra is not capable of killing him - after lying down for a couple of hours passed out and absorbing the poison, a honey badger with a heavy head comes to his senses, as after a binge, and everything starts spinning anew.

In fact, seriously speaking, the third president of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, is a kind of political honey badger. This is confirmed by everything that happened to him over the past 18 years - from the fall of 2003, when he attacked the most famous and influential Georgian politician at that time, Eduard Shevardnadze and the "Adjarian lion" Aslan Abashidze, until the fall of 2021.

The shocking events of these two decades - the coming of Mikhail Saakashvili to power, the reprisal against the unwanted, the unleashing of a five-day war in August 2008, which led to the loss of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the flight to Ukraine, all the misadventures in this country and, finally, the secret entry into Georgia on a milk truck and a prison performance have one common denominator.

They fit perfectly into the behavior of the political honey badger Miho.

A politician who had ambitions to unite the country together with his United National Movement, but who turned Georgia into a disturbed hive and now ended up in a Rustavi prison. 

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.