Georgian Leader Slammed for 'Stripper' Minister

(July 29) -- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose government is stuffed with ex-models and former-centerfolds, now has a rival in the most inappropriate ministerial appointment contest: Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. His latest hire -- 28-year-old Vera Kobalia -- this week found herself at the center of a mounting scandal, after Russian media published a Facebook photo of the fresh-faced Georgian economic minister posing on a table allegedly at a Vancouver strip club in February.

Leading state-run tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, which jumps on every opportunity to tarnish Russia's old rival Saakashvili, splashed the photo across its front page Wednesday under the headline: "From Strippers to Ministers." Other Russian news outlets quickly followed up with similar stories.

But Kobalia's father, who owns a bakery in Vancouver, told The Vancouver Sun that there was nothing indecent about the photo. "They didn't do anything wrong," said Otari Kobalia, who argues the photo is a decade old and was taken in Miami, not Vancouver. "I raised my kids in an ethical and right way, and they are free to do whatever they want. I believe these girls were having fun. It was a long time ago, taken at a bachelor party." And Kobalia herself was reported by Britain's Independent as saying, "If the worst thing that the opposition or anyone else can find about me is my old picture from college then I don't see anything wrong with that."

There's no indication Kobalia was taking part in a striptease in the photo. She's fully clothed in a short skirt, although the four other young women are showing a significant amount of skin. And it's almost impossible to tell where the picture was taken.

Indeed, it's possible that the photo is simply the latest in a long line of attempts by the Russian press to portray Saakashvili as a sex-obsessed autocrat. Last year, for instance, state broadcaster Russia Today reported that the president had spent a week in the company of celebrity masseuse Dorothy Stein (aka Dr. Dot) who bites the backs of her clients -- including Mick Jagger, Mariah Carey, and Bruce Willis -- to relieve their stresses and strains.

But even before the photo's release, Kobalia's appointment as economic minister in July was a source of considerable controversy in Georgia. She has no political experience -- her biography says she previously worked as a TV producer in Canada and was a partner at an unnamed Vancouver firm -- and only met Saakashvili during his trip to the Vancouver Winter Olympics this February.

"Think how ambitious a person has to be to take the position of the head of the main economic body in the country, without having either the necessary education or any experience whatsoever," Nodar Dzhavakhishvili, the former head of the Georgian National Bank, said at the time. "I think anyone could find someone in their family who was far more experienced and qualified in this field than Ms Kobalia."

Her father, though, believes she's the perfect person for the post. "Vera has always been directed to something big, to change the world," he said. "She is very well-educated, she reads a lot of books, she is involved in the environment," he told The Vancouver Sun. "Georgia needs a person who will be Western-oriented and pushes always in Western directions and new kinds of development."