Update

...Any minute now, "Mr. Clean-up" will touchdown in Batumi, the Adjaran capital. Georgians will well remember the last time they hosted Igor Ivanov, the secretary of Russia's Security Council. He was in Tbilisi, under very similar circumstances, negotiating the terms of Shevardnadze's resignation. He'll soon be meeting with Aslan.

Damn, if this country can oust two despots in the space of 7 months? It had never been done in a post-Soviet country until Georgia booted Shevy in November. And that had the rest of the autocrats in the former Soviet space, as Putin so elegantly put it, "shitting their pants." The bad news for reformers in other countries is that the more Georgia succeeds in kicking out the despots, the more other rulers feel the need to crack down on civil society and its attendant freedoms, to prevent a repeat in their own borders. We're seeing this explicitly in Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and more. Still, that's a different battle. I'm rooting for my home team on this one. Someone get me a beer.

Update II

Rustavi 2 is issuing an unofficial report that Abashidze has resigned. Can it be?