While thousands were celebrating the second night of ‘Rose Revolution’ in Georgia on November 24 with the rock concert outside the Parliament, ex-President Eduard Shevardnadze was giving interview to the western televisions, saying he avoided bloodshed with resignation. Shevardnadze looked exhausted.
Meanwhile, Georgia’s new leader Nino Burjanadze vows to keep stability in the country and prepares for holding new presidential and parliamentary elections.
In his interviews to the ZDF, CNN and Reuters Eduard Shevardnadze explained the moves he did just before he was forced to leave the office. This was the first appearance of Shevardnadze, since his resignation in the evening on November 23, as a result of bloodless revolution.
“I thought that the announcement of state of emergency [on November 22] and the anticipation of troops to come to deal with the crisis, would have dispersed the people, I thought they would have been scared; however there were too many of them [protesters]. It was absolutely impossible to disperse them without bloodshed. But bloodshed is not my style,” Eduard Shevardnadze said.
“The bloodshed would have been a black page in our history. I could not permit this, especially on the eve of expiration of my presidential term,” he added.
“Democracy needs to be controlled. It is not good too much of democracy. I think this was my mistake. Our people appeared to be absolutely unprepared for too much of democracy,” Eduard Shevardnadze said.
While speaking about his mistakes, he said that he underestimated power of the opposition and those forces which were controlled by the foreign countries.
“I thought those movements, which were developing in Georgia, like it was in Yugoslavian – you remember young people running in the streets, chanting some kind of slogans [Shevardnadze hinted on Kmara anti-governmental movement] – I thought they would have calmed down. But I was wrong,” Shevardnadze said.