Georgia and Ukraine. An odd couple

Two presidents who should swap jobs

STRUGGLING with a divided government and a fractious parliament, Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine's president, last week visited Georgia to see his friend Mikhail Saakashvili, whose problems are even worse. Mr Saakashvili, who swept to the Georgian presidency after the "rose revolution" a year before Ukraine's "orange" one, imparted tips on how to govern after an upheaval--and, perhaps inadvertently, how not to.

Georgia and Ukraine share two characteristic post-Soviet difficulties: endemic corruption and Russian meddling. In both areas, Mr Saakashvili has scored some successes. Russia has dropped its preposterous conditions for leaving its remaining military bases in Georgia (its Black Sea fleet is still based in Ukraine's Crimea), agreeing to be out by 2008, a reversal of policy that Mr Saakashvili attributes partly to American pressure. But in other respects, the Russians are irking Mr Saakashvili more than they are Mr Yushchenko. A porn film, depicting a supposed mile-high tryst between Mr Saakashvili and Yulia Timoshenko, Ukraine's prime minister, captures a prevalent Moscow attitude to its disloyal former vassals.

Mr Yushchenko has only to contend with the enduring suspicion of Russophone eastern Ukraine. Mr Saakashvili faces Russian sponsorship of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two breakaway Georgian enclaves. The Georgians believe that Russians were involved in a bombing in Gori in February: Mr Saakashvili says he hopes it wasn't the federal government. Both Georgia and Ukraine are vulnerable to capricious spikes in Russian gas prices; both want to diversify energy supplies.

On corruption--a big issue in both revolutions--Mr Yushchenko has muddied his reputation by angrily rebuffing questions over his son's mysteriously extravagant lifestyle. But he has also emulated Mr Saakashvili's anti-corruption strategy of wholesale sacking and prosecutions, even if critics say some punishments look like vendettas. In Georgia, the strategy seems to be working: tax revenues are up as businesses come out of the shadows, and graft-facilitating red tape has been cut. Mr Saakashvili is dispatching Kakha Bendukidze, his principal tape-cutter, to help do a similar job in Ukraine.

Another problem that Mr Saakashvili can advise on is the post-revolutionary let-down. He says he is over the "expectation crisis" of earlier this year, and has delivered such concrete improvements as better roads, more trustworthy police, education reform and more reliable power. But his critics say he has focused too little on the tough business of the economy and too much on symbolic triumphs and stunts, such as his Ajaria adventure, Russian bases and the idea of a new block of democracies that he and Mr Yushchenko proposed last week.

This concern for public relations is an aspect of what some say is his biggest failing: his tendency to behave like a revolutionary, trusting only a few loyalists, disliking criticism and valuing ends above means, as in some of the questionable methods used in his early anti-corruption push. Zurab Zhvania, his prime minister, was said to be a restraining influence on the president's impetuosity. But he died in February. Mr Saakashvili has bolstered the presidency's powers; his party has a huge parliamentary majority; and he has no serious rivals. The biggest protests against his government came after two popular wrestlers were jailed for extortion. The president says that the country's critical media compensate for the opposition's weakness; some complain that they are tame.

By contrast, the cerebral Mr Yushchenko may be too unrevolutionary. Even during the revolution he was hardly rabble-rousing, and he has not been able to discipline his government into coherent policy-making. He is due to give many of the president's powers away in a constitutional reform--a mistake, says Mr Saakashvili: he "should at least keep what he has." If they could borrow each other's personalities for a while, they might both do better. Time for a presidential job swap?