President Saakashvili used his fifth annual state of the nation address for boosting efforts to redirect discourse in the country from political affairs on economic agenda and to demonstrate his constructive engagement with the parliamentary minority group.
In the speech, which lasted slightly over an hour, the President spoke about “economic difficulties” – he said there was “no economic crisis” – and social issues for about 55 minutes, allocating less than ten minutes for foreign and domestic political issues.
Even when mentioning matters related with the internal political developments, he was mainly raising it in the context of the economic agenda.
“It is our joint responsibility and major task to direct all of our efforts towards overcoming the problem of unemployment, instead of political wrangling. This is our major task today,” Saakashvili said.
“Catastrophic economic difficulties are especially in those countries, amid global financial crisis, where it was not possible to maintain political stability,” he added and mentioned Ukraine in this context, which, he said, was failing to overcome economic crisis, because of “permanent wrangling and confrontation between the various groups.”
He also said that despite difficulties Georgia’s economic outlook remained positive, but he again added that these relatively positive forecasts “will remain very vulnerable if we fail to maintain peace and political stability.”
“We face a huge battle ahead; fight for rescuing economy; fight for maintaining working places and struggle against poverty and our success in this struggle depends on one thing – whether or not we will be able to maintain unity and stability. We can only win this decisive struggle for the country’s future jointly,” Saakashvili said.
The annual event in the Parliament was carefully pre-planned as a result of talks between the ruling party and lawmakers from the parliamentary minority. Unlike his previous three state of the nation addresses, President Saakashvili did not left the parliament chamber after his speech; instead he stayed, listened to the rebuttal speeches and then responded to them – the entire event lasted for about four hours.
“I think these were one of the best debates ever held in the Georgian Parliament,” Saakashvili told lawmakers. “I think with these debates today Georgia has passed test in democracy with success.”
Nino Burjanadze, a former parliamentary speaker, who now leads Democratic Movement–United Georgia party, said on February 12 that President Saakashvili was refusing to engage in debates with “real opposition” in previous years. “When there was a real opposition in the Parliament, I could not convince the President to engage in debates,” she said.
In his speech defending the President’s address, the parliamentary majority leader, MP Petre Tsiskarishvili mentioned demand pushed by the opposition parties outside the parliament involving President Saakashvili’s resignation and calling early elections.
“Mr. President, our [ruling] party’s position is that the precedent of last year [when early presidential and parliamentary elections were held] should not become a rule – calling early elections after each and every difficulty makes the country more unstable,” he said.
While responding the lawmakers’ comments, President Saakashvili ruled out stepping down before the end of his second presidential term in 2013 and said: “I will be performing my presidential duties before 2013 and then there will be a new president, who will be elected in the democratic and free elections.”
On the economic front the President reiterated his and new PM Nika Gilauri’s announcements made in their recent public speeches about the three-point economic plan, as well as the intention to cut administrative costs of the state agencies by 10%, as part of the policy of “tightening belts.” In this context he also said that the government would hand over one of the presidential residence to the kindergarten and would sell two others in Batumi and Zugdidi. He also proposed a new scheme of state co-financed health insurance package, which, he said, would be available for large part of the citizens.
‘War not Over Yet’
President Saakashvili also told the lawmakers that although “our major trouble is related to protecting Georgia against economic financial crisis… we cannot forget that our country faces huge foreign political challenges.”
“We will make those people, who have expelled them [internally displaced persons] out of their homes, to pay through the nose,” Saakashvili said using a Georgian expression, which can be translated as: to make someone bleed with vinegar from nose.
He also said that “the Russian people are not our enemy.” “The policy pursued by the Russian leader [Vladimir] Putin and his aggressive circle is our enemy,” he added.
“The Russia’s current authorities want to destroy our statehood; we should confront this with our unity… This is the enemy, whose eventual goal is to wipe-out Georgia out from the world political map and no one should have an illusion about it,” Saakashvili said.
He also said that under such condition Georgia’s priority remained to integrate into NATO.
Saakashvili denounced notion of “lost war” and said that “losers and winners are defined when the war is over.”
“But nothing is yet over,” he said. “If there is a loser in the war there should also be a winner – and you want to tell me that Russia is a winner? If Russia won this war, why it is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on information war against us?”