Parliamentary Assembly

Mr Saakashvili, President of Georgia

First, I could have tried to form a government for a few months, and of course I did not do that. The president could have kept the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Prosecutors Office, but we did not do that; we gave them away. Georgian people voted, and I thought that this government should have assumed the whole responsibility. I still believe that that was the right thing to do. The way in which we approached the affair was for the new government to assume the whole responsibility and the president to play an arbitration role. Unfortunately, some of the events that unfolded later made such a neutral arbitration role much more difficult to enforce because the very foundation of the constitutional system came under attack, like the constitutional majority. Pressure was put on MPs by blackmailing them and bringing criminal cases against them. There have been attacks on local government en masse and attacks on the judicial system. Those are not good.

Otherwise, as I said, we have a strong interest in keeping this new model of co-operation, because it is new. In the parliamentary majority, there are people who understand that Georgia has to move to another model where people have different levels of responsibility. There might be a president from one party, a parliamentary majority from another and local government in different places from different parties; that is a normal way of life. That is a new tradition, and I think there is a unique chance for the judiciary to become strong and for the media to play a key role. The president has an important role in fostering political cohabitation to help this process for the remaining 10 or 11 months before the new term of office. This is an important process of transition. We do not have a tradition of this, but I think we should create one. I do not lose hope.

Mr Saakashvili, President of Georgia

We do not have to learn the lesson that peace is always better than war; I have always believed that, and it is especially true for a small country in a difficult geopolitical environment, unless you are a fool or you are suicidal. I claim to be neither of those, and I do not think that I represent a nation that is foolish or suicidal en masse.

The issue is not one of reconciliation of the parties. We should keep in place core political systems that allow different opinions to be voiced: an independent judiciary and media, and checks and balances that prevent things getting out of control even if people despise or lambast each other. That is not what I would choose to do – I am not comfortable with that – but, whatever happens, political systems should allow opinions to be voiced within a framework. That is what we have tried to create in Georgia.

We have taken a number of important steps to reach out to Russian society. Overall, normalisation between Georgia and Russia should be based on small ideas. The principal need for our region, though, is that Russia should give up imperial ambitions and allow all the countries to regain their territorial integrity, to develop as independent nations on their own, to join any alliances they want, to be free in their choices and to be successful on their own without being impeded. Russia should only gain from that, so it is in the interests not only of those nations but of Russia.

We do our best. Even at the height of the tensions when Russia was bombing us, we never used hate speech against Russian society or Russia in general. We always wanted to protect our country, but we never wanted to do irreparable damage to our relationship. I always kept that in mind, as did most of the Georgian political class. As I said, despite the fact that Russia placed heavy visa requirements on Georgia and has introduced a visa for trade, we have never placed any restrictions on Russian trade. They imposed a full-blown energy embargo on us, but we sold electricity to them. We encourage Russian tourists to visit and do our best to strengthen cultural ties. We had a chance to block Russia’s access to the World Trade Organisation, but we thought that keeping Russia within a multilateral framework was good for us, as a small country. I still believe in all that. Eventually things will go the right way, but small nations must be patient. Meanwhile, we have to survive and be successful on our own.

Mr Saakashvili, President of Georgia (interpretation)

Thank you for that question. As I said in my speech, everything that the new government has said publicly is premised on the idea that there can be no alternative for Georgia apart from NATO and the European Union. That at least is what it said in the early weeks after it took office. Now, its tone has changed completely. We hope that that is purely accidental, or that it will change again in the future. After all, we held a referendum in which almost 60% of Georgians voted in favour of joining NATO. The percentage of those in favour is much higher now – almost 80% – and the number of those against is very small, even insignificant. We consider that there is no major opposition group that might prevent that from happening.

Any government, or any political group that harbours hope of governing Georgia, if it wants genuinely to represent the interests of the population, must not disregard the fact that the entire population is in favour of NATO and Europe. Indeed, the Assembly, the European Parliament and all the important European political institutions can act tremendously to enhance and promote democracy in Georgia. All Georgians are aware of a strong feeling of sympathy, support and concern, and that is perhaps more important than public statements. Obviously, public statements have changed a lot, but there is more to it than that.

Mr Saakashvili, President of Georgia

I am very pleased that our Russian neighbours are suddenly taking a very keen interest in human rights, democracy and the freedom of individuals. I hope that you put those principles into practice on a daily basis in your wonderful, great country. Of course, we welcome the fact that Russia daily respects the rights of individuals. Once you do that, maybe one day we will learn from you.

In my country, we always welcomed and listened carefully to every criticism from an international group or organisation. Sometimes we disagreed, but we always listened. I am very proud of the fact that although we came from a time of lawlessness, from a place that was one of the most criminalised and lawless in Europe, according to the European Union, Georgia has now become the safest country in Europe. Its crime rate is a fifth of that in Russia, by the way, to point out a small comparison. We have also become the least corrupt country in Europe. According to Transparency International, the last figure showed us 80 places ahead of Russia. In the rankings for business environment, Russia is 139th and Georgia is 9th. Those rankings are worked out by international organisations; this is not me telling you what I believe. Those are our benchmarks, and for small countries, they matter. I guess that for a big country such as Russia, they do not really matter. Some people in Russia rejoiced in our success and congratulated us on it; some people got nervous. It is a matter of choices and priorities.

We have further work to do, and we will share our experience with Russia. Thank you for your question.

Mr Saakashvili, President of Georgia

First, thank you for telling me. I heard it from you today at lunch, but did not know about it before. Perhaps one of the things about which I am proudest and could write in my autobiography is that I introduced a new rule into this Assembly. After my last speech, somebody in the Bureau said that, following Saakashvili asking for spontaneous questions, no one has to write questions. When I was a member of the Assembly, I had to write questions that I wanted to ask. So if I have allowed some ink to be saved here, that is a great honour for me. Thank you for telling me that that is what happened.

One of my best decisions, taken during the elections on 1 October, was immediately, without any delay after the exit polls – within a few minutes – to recognise the results. Nobody did that in Georgian history before, neither opposition nor the government, even if the government usually won the elections. There was one before the Rose Revolution that did not. However, I did not hesitate. I have to tell you that I did not consult anybody, not even my closest friends. I did it because I thought that it was the right thing to do. I did it in an upbeat and optimistic mood for the future of the country. I have to say that I was not optimistic about the government that was coming in – I was pessimistic – but I was optimistic about the country and about the experience that it would gain from that government about which I was pessimistic. That was my instinct.

If I start mentioning the worst decisions, it will be a long list and I do not want to burden the Assembly with those. Maybe I will think more about it.

Mr Saakashvili, President of Georgia

As I said, we should keep in place the democratic framework; that is what really matters. We should keep an independent judiciary, which is under attack right now, as we speak. Members of the government, such as ministers and others call the chairman of the supreme court, say, a criminal on a daily basis. He is anything but criminal. They just initiated, by the way, a Maoist law in the Georgian Parliament that would replace courts with so-called jury trials, but the defendant would not have the right to choose whether to face a jury. That was the proposal. I do not know whether it will be finally voted on.

We have seen what these mobs look like, because they attack our local government from time to time on a daily basis. I know what they look like. The same people that attack local governments with sticks and other things in their hands will be given the right to try political figures. They said that political figures should be tried by them. They will be nominated by prosecutors and the defendants will not have the right to choose between them and a professional judge. The only example I know like that is the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1950s and 1960s. That was one of the proposals that we got.

If you create such proposals, there is a problem, but hopefully proposals will not pass. I hope that there will be people who understand that this would lead to absolute madness. Hopefully, they will understand that calling the chief justice, who has a totally untainted reputation and is a highly respected figure in Georgia, a criminal every night is madness and irresponsible. Hopefully, they will understand that menacing every government official – or former government officials – with arrest every night on television is, to say the least, unserious. Hopefully, they will understand that telling your parliamentary opposition, “You had better shut up or we will send you to prison”, on a daily basis in parliament, in front of cameras, is not serious. I think that this will not pass.

This happened in other places, as well. It happened in the 1990s with regard to political orientation. I think that there is no segment of the Georgian population that wants such change. Georgian people voted for a better life, not for arrests, and not for resisting NATO, Europe and the west and not for turning our back on NATO and the European Union. No, they did not vote for that. They did not vote for the Government to go against what they fundamentally wanted. There is no such segment of the Georgian population; we are not divided in that way.

That is why I am optimistic about our society. People everywhere want to live better. Economic growth in the first four years of our government was a double-digit average, which was good. In the last three years, we had more or less 6%, then 7%, then we were supposed to have 8% last year, but it was a little bit less because the elections happened. We had high economic growth, but no matter how fast you grow, people want more; we know it. You can never catch up.

As politicians, you know how it is. It is like surfing. You are surfing political waves and in the end some wave will catch up with you and cover you. The main thing is not to drown and, one day, to come back on the wave. Any surfer experiences this from time to time. We are political surfers, from that point of view. That is normal. But we should not change our direction in the surf, that is for sure, because the direction of the wind – I do not know whether members surf – never changes.

Mr Saakashvili, President of Georgia (interpretation)

On relations between Russia and Georgia, you see one Georgia and I see a different one. For all the respect that I have for you, you need spectacles to see Georgia as it really is. Georgia is a fully fledged member of the international community and, whatever you say about other people, it will not change anything in this Assembly. Nobody, not even the most pro-Russian person in Georgia, will be able to give you what you want. Georgians just are not going to give up their territory – it is a simple point – and there is no reason we should. Once you begin to see Georgia as it really is, then we can enter into positive relations.

We have never tried to create any problems for you. You know that the leaders of many countries would refuse to answer you in your language. I have told President Putin that I may be the last Georgian leader able to speak to him in Russian and able to quote Yesenin, Brodsky, Pushkin and even contemporary Russian writers, not just the classics. I speak Russian much better than the current Prime minister, not to mention that I know the poetry of Yesenin and he does not.

So let us shed our illusions and let us really understand the nub and essence of the issue, which is that the Russian Federation has to shed its imperialist ambitions and cease trying to increase its territory using the means that it does.

I have visited the borders that you closed down unilaterally and have shaken hands with hundreds of Russian tourists who come to our territory. I never felt any aggression from them. The Russian man in the street is not the problem; the imperialist ambitions of its leaders are the problem. One of the people I shook hands with ended up in prison, so now I do it without television cameras. We should have good relations with all our neighbours. Our borders are what they are, and that is a lesson in geography that you should learn so that Georgia’s integrity can be preserved.

Mr Saakashvili, President of Georgia (interpretation)

With your permission, Madame, I will reply in English.

(The speaker continued in English.)

When I was asked by the Georgian people before the election, I told them how I saw it. The new government promised the people that they would return to the past. They told them that the reforms of the past eight years were bad and that what had happened before was good. I told them that what was before was bad and that what had happened since was not ideal, but that we were heading in the right direction and that we should move forward. That was the essential difference. We advised our people not to risk returning to the past, because there was nothing nice there. We are now experimenting with reliving the past, and the past has concrete names, faces, experiences – of corruption, mismanagement and certain attitudes towards minorities, local government, relations between ethnic and religious groups, the idea of Europeanness and whether western culture is part of our psyche. We are debating those fundamental values. Our differences are value-based, not just about what kind of social or small economic adjustments we should make.

I fundamentally believe that we cannot promise people what we cannot deliver. For instance, we cannot promise them that they can do nothing and we can feed them. That has not happened anywhere, and it will not happen in Georgia. It is a myth. We have lived through this myth. Our people understand, first, that you cannot be idle – not work – and expect someone to feed them. It is nostalgia. Nobody ever managed to deliver it, however, and no one will do so in Georgia, not matter how many billions they might have in their pockets. In fact, the more billions they have, the less they will deliver to the people. It is a myth that if someone has money, they will share it with you. It is usually exactly the opposite.

The second idea is that you can change your relations with your neighbours, especially great imperial neighbours, simply by trying to please them, without giving up fundamental interests. That is not how it works. Instead, you should develop and be successful on your own, and then they will reconsider their relations with you. The third thing we will learn is that we should continually rejuvenate our institutions and continually have new blood and give way to new generations. The country should also be open to new ideas. We should never return to the past. That is how I see it. We should be open to the future and never try to revisit the past. I am not that young anymore. When people long for the past, they do not long for communism or the Soviet Union; we simply miss our younger years – we miss looking better, being more energetic and having better prospects, and that is all right. In our case, however, there was also a very bad political system. Our population has been offered a poisonous bill, and we swallowed it. I hope we will survive it and will go on with our lives.

Mr Saakashvili, President of Georgia

Merci Madame Durrieu

Mr Saakashvili, President of Georgia

The last attempt at legitimisation concerned the poor health of Hugo Chavez, who was our Russian neighbour’s last hope in the Americas. Then they bribed a couple of small island nations in Oceania – Nauru and Tuvalu. The Prime Minister of Tuvalu met Foreign Minister Lavrov in New York for three hours. They summoned a plane for him to New York, and he was flown out and brought to Abkhazia, where he signed an agreement recognising Abkhazia. I can only guess what else was involved in the transaction. The great nation of Russia, after long discussions with the island nation of Tuvalu, made a big diplomatic breakthrough: finally somebody else recognised their occupation of Abkhazia. Congratulations Russian friends. It is great.

It is a shame that the Russian Federation, in the 21st century, is playing such diplomatic tricks on a nation that should be its natural friend and ally, provided it respects our right to exist and develop normally. That is the point. Instead of trying to reach out to us, however, it is trying to reach out to Tuvalu. I have nothing against Tuvalu – I have lots of friends in Oceania, and, as a result of Russian policy, I take an interest in that region – but is that the way for our neighbourly relations? Is that the way to pursue our foreign policy goals? I think that is exactly what we are trying to change eventually, once Georgia develops further.

Twice in one week last year, Dmitri Medvedev said, “We have to imitate Georgia.” First he said, “Yes, I absolutely hate Saakashvili, but we have to acknowledge that he made some amazing reforms and learn from them.” The second time, he said, “I would like to learn from them, but we are too big and they are too small. It is impossible for Russia; we cannot really do it.” Four years ago, they said that Georgia should disappear and that I was a political corpse. They menaced me with physical destruction – I guess that threat is still there – but they are still saying four years later, “By the way, we should also learn from this guy whom we are going to hang very soon how to run our own country.”

That is remarkable. It shows that there is a chance for realism in Russian policy. I welcome it, and I hope that it will grow and that no matter who is in government or who is president of Georgia or Russia in future, our peoples will find a common language based on their interests rather than talking through faraway island nations, which, with all due respect, I do not think should be decisive players in our bilateral relations.

Mr Saakashvili, President of Georgia

I hear what I hear. When I hear it, then I start to think. What I have heard – I do not have to repeat it at length – is that we managed to resist pressure from Europe and America. I have not heard such a quotation from any Georgian leader since 1991. I have heard that the Secretary-General of NATO – correct me if I misquote any of you – came close to intervening in the domestic affairs of Georgia, and I have heard that for the first time ever in Georgian history, Georgia has something called domestic affairs in which the Secretary-General of NATO cannot meddle. I do not accept that. I know that there are people with different views on NATO, but I have my own strong views. If you want to be part of NATO, you accept friendly criticism, or at least listen to it without openly objecting. Membership has its price. It clearly resonates with certain notions of democracy in other countries.

Just a few days ago, I heard a great example: I heard that we should have the same distance from and the same kind of relations with Russia as with NATO. I refuse to accept that. That tests the concrete price of foreign policy. I also heard it said that Georgia should stop being a problem for relations between the west and Russia, and I fully agree, but the way that point has been put suggests we should stop being a problem without the current problems being solved. That might mean Georgia disappears as a country, not just as a problem. That has happened in our history. Clearly, therefore, in some ways we think things are moving in the wrong direction. I hope I am wrong about all this, but other people think the same way as I do.