passivity of the old régime. The lights in the resplendent presidential palace now go off at night (Ivanishvili complained that Saakashvili was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on electricity.) Vano Merabishvili, former prime minister and strong man of Saakashvili’s régime, watches while his deputies are arrested; on 26 November, as this article is being written, he has been told that he may face eight years' imprisonment. Gigi Ugulava, the mayor of Tbilisi, likewise must have packed his suitcase, as he waits for his deputy to provide the necessary kompromat to arrest him. Giga Bokeria, the president’s chief adviser and reputedly Georgia’s most intelligent man (his mother is the women's world chess champion), says nothing.

Whether they have a cunning plan to use what is left of presidential("go on foot!") shames drivers who park on the pavements by displaying their cars and faces on a website.

Civil society cannot cope with Georgia’s major problems, for which so far the new government offers no solutions. Agriculture still produces a fraction of the food that it produced in Soviet times: the only crop where an increase in the harvest has been announced is carrots, one of the few vegetables that plays no part in Georgian cuisine. And the demolition of buildings in Tbilisi goes on: all a developer has to do is make a few holes in a wall, then pay the city council the equivalent of $1,120 for an "instability permit" allowing him to demolish a 19th-century wooden house and erect a concrete monstrosity with a façade