In 2003, as a leading opposition figure, he accused the government of rigging the 2003 Georgian parliamentary election, triggering mass street protests and President Shevardnadze's ouster in the bloodless Rose Revolution.

In 2018, the Tbilisi City Court sentenced him in absentia to six years in prison for ordering the beating of Valery Gelashvili and pardoning by prior agreement the individuals tried for Sandro Girgvliani's murder.

[34] After graduation, while on internship in the New York law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler in early 1995, he was approached by Zurab Zhvania, an old friend from Georgia who was working on behalf of President Eduard Shevardnadze to enter politics.

[citation needed] But, in mid-2001, he became involved in a major controversy with the State Security Minister Vakhtang Kutateladze and Tbilisi police chief Ioseb Alavidze, accusing them of profiting from corrupt business deals.

He declared that corruption had penetrated to the very centre of the Georgian government and that Shevardnadze lacked the will to deal with it, warning that "current developments in Georgia will turn the country into a criminal enclave in one or two years."

In the first months of his presidency, Saakashvili faced a major political crisis in the southwestern Autonomous Republic of Adjara run by an authoritarian regional leader, Aslan Abashidze, who largely ignored the central Georgian government and was viewed by many as pro-Russian.

In late July 2006, Saakashvili's government dealt successfully with another major crisis, this time in Abkhazia's Kodori Gorge where Georgia's police forces disarmed a defiant militia led by a local warlord Emzar Kvitsiani.

His government decriminalized libel and pushed through legislation upholding freedom of speech, although he was accused of stifling the media and using the judicial system to go after his political opponents in spite of this.

[39][53] Saakashvili's government massively increased military spending to modernize the Georgian Armed Forces, which were small and poorly equipped and trained at the time he entered office.

[57] Saakashvili's government maintained diplomatic relations with other Caucasian states and western-oriented nearby countries such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine.

[58] That August, Saakashvili, who holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Haifa, travelled to Israel again to attend the opening of the official Week of Georgian-Jewish Friendship, held under the auspices of the Georgian president, for which the Jewish leaders were invited as honoured guests.

[59] The late Georgian businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili claimed that pressure had been exerted on his financial interests after Imedi Television broadcast several accusations against officials.

The President's declaration of a state of emergency (7–16 November) and the restrictions imposed on some mass media sources led to harsh criticism of the Saakashvili government both in Georgia and abroad.

Human Rights Watch criticized the Georgian government for using "excessive" force against protesters in November and International Crisis Group warned of growing authoritarianism.

[71] On 5 January 2008, an early presidential election was held nationwide, with the exception of the highland village of Shatili, where the polling station was not opened due to high levels of snowfall.

[79] On 23 March 2014, when Saakashvili was summoned to give testimony to the main prosecutor's office of Georgia, the office planned to interrogate him about the pardoning in 2008 of four high-ranking officials of the Department of Constitutional Security of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs – Gia Alania, Avtandil Aptsiauri, Alexander Gachava and Mikhail Bibiluridze, who were convicted for causing the death of bank employee Sandro Girgvliani on 28 January 2006, as well as for unlawful actions against his friend Levan Bukhaidze.

[83] On 2 August 2014, Tbilisi City Court ordered pre-trial detention in absentia for Saakashvili and the co-accused Zurab Adeishvili (chief prosecutor in 2007) and Davit Kezerashvili (defense minister in 2007), with a preliminary hearing appointed for September 2014.

[89] On 8 August 2017, the Georgian General Prosecutor's Office claimed Saakashvili would face up to 11 years of imprisonment (charges included the spending of public funding on personal needs, abuse of power during the dispersal of a demonstration on 7 November 2007, the beating of former MP Valery Gelashvili and the raid of Imedi TV).

[91] On 5 January 2018, the Tbilisi City Court sentenced Saakashvili to three-year imprisonment in absentia for abusing power in pardoning the former Interior Ministry officials convicted in the 2006 Sandro Girgvliani murder case.

On 28 June 2018, the Tbilisi City Court found Saakashvili guilty of abusing his authority as president by trying to cover up evidence related to the 2005 beating of opposition lawmaker Valery Gelashvili and sentenced him in absentia to six years in prison.

[102] In the autumn of 2015, informal attempts and negotiations were launched to form a political party around Saakashvili with members of the parliamentary group Interfactional Union "Eurooptimists", Democratic Alliance and possibly Self Reliance, but this project collapsed in June 2016.

[129] On 8 December, General Prosecutor of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko announced that National Police officers had found the location of Saakashvili, detained him and placed him in a temporary detention centre.

[138] On 4 June, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko offered Saakashvili to join the leadership of his UDAR party and to take part in the July 2019 early parliamentary elections.

)[140] Saakashvili wrote on his Facebook page on 22 April 2020 that he had received a proposal from President Zelenskyy to become Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine for reforms in the Shmyhal Government.

Meanwhile, members of the UNM-affiliated group, Free Zone, held press briefing in Tbilisi, accusing Saakashvili of instructing the leader of the organization Koba Khabazi to prepare for staging disorders.

These statements were made on the basis of Tbilisi City Court decisions in 2018, which condemned Saakashvili for six years in prison for abuse of power, embezzlement and his role in the organization of a grievous bodily injury against an opposition lawmaker Valery Gelashvili.

With their letter, the Ambassadors William Harrison Courtney (1995-1997), Kenneth Spencer Yalowitz (1998-2001), Richard Monroe Miles (2002-2005), John F. Tefft (2005-2009), and Ian C. Kelly (2015-2018), joined the international concerns which have escalated following the frail and decimated appearance of former President Mikheil Saakashvili during a remote court hearing.

They have based their claims on documents published on U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Unit website, which contained information about Saakashvili's and his family members' spendings on lobbyists in the US, which were tasked with working on convincing U.S. congressmen and senators to impose sanctions against Georgia.

[citation needed] In 2023, Saakashvili filed a case in the ECHR, stating that his rights had been violated in prison and calling the Court to order his transferal to a hospital in Warsaw in Poland.

On 28 June 2018, Tbilisi City Court sentenced former President Mikheil Saakashvili to six years in prison in absentia for, among other crimes, ordering the attack on Valeri Gelashvili in 2005.