Nino Burdzhanadze

Nino Burdzhanadze (born July 16, 1964) is acting President of Georgia after the resignation of Eduard Shevardnadze on November 23, 2003. She was formerly speaker of the Georgian parliament, a position she held from November 9, 2001.

She was born in Kutaisi, Georgia, is a graduate of Tbilisi State University's law faculty and has a PhD in International Law from Moscow Lomonosov State University; she was first elected to the parliament of Georgia in 1995. She has been a vice president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly since 2000. She is the leader of the Burjanadze-Democrats political party, which she formed in 2003 after leaving Shevardnadze's Citizen's Union of Georgia just before the parliamentary elections. Her father, a wealthy businessman, financed Shevardnadze's presidential campaign in 2000. Before her election as speaker, she headed the Georgian parliament's legal committee until 1999 and was subsequently the chairman of the parliamentary commission for foreign affairs. She was nominated to the post of speaker by the Union of Georgian Traditionalists faction and was later supported by several other factions.

Burdzhanadze is widely respected by her compatriots; opinion polling in 2003 showed her to be one of Georgia's three most popular political figures. Although she gave Shevardnadze strong support in his dealings with foreign countries (particularly Russia), she spoke out forcefully against the corruption and inefficiency of his government's domestic policy, declaring it to be "absolutely incompetent." After the rigged parliamentary elections of November 2, 2003 she joined other opposition leaders in denouncing the election results and urging mass demonstrations against Shevardnadze. The terms of the Georgian constitution automatically made her president when Shevardnadze resigned. One of Burdzhanadze's first actions was to appeal for national unity and repeal the state of emergency declared by Shevardnadze, in an effort to restore stability to a country with a long history of political violence.

She is seen as US-leaning and has said that she wants Georgia to join the European Union and NATO as soon as possible.

Burdzhanadze is married to Georgia's deputy prosecutor general. They have two sons, 10 and 18 years old (as of November 2003).