Georgian media reports that Mikhail Saakashvilli, President of Georgia, yesterday, September 25, had made a speech at the UN General Assembly.
As reported, Saakashvilli stressed that parliamentary elections on October 1 will show that Georgia will not go back into the past regardless of military threats and “dirty money from the North”.
Before addressing upcoming elections, he spoke of prison scandal in Georgia saying that his response to these “sickening” facts was “swift” and did “what democracies must do.”
“The facts were sickening and our responsibility was clear; our reaction was swift and we did what democracies must do – we identified all the responsible, all these responsible were arrested, two government ministers have resigned and we put in charge of the prison system the fiercest critic of the prison system – the human rights defender, the Georgian ombudsman” said Saakashvilli and added “this is how democracies learn; this is how we improve and this is how my own government has overcome errors and challenges in the past to emerge stronger, more effective and even more committed to building institutionalized open society,” he said. “Building and maintaining open society entails painful learning and significant risk-taking… These risks are worth taking”.
After the prison scandal Saakashvili talked about Russia-Georgia relations.
He said that with its democratic reforms and success Georgia was setting a positive example for the post-Soviet space, but at the same time it was “a very bad example for Russian point of view.” He said and added “the Russian authorities want Georgia off the map, because if Georgia survives and if Georgia continues then that’s a bad example for all the others, including the Russian people itself from the point of view of the present Russian government.”
Saakashvili then raised the issue of Russia’s military exercises, Kavkaz-2012, and said that Moscow had made “an extraordinary decision” to hold these large-scale drills “on the eve and around the time of our elections.”
“One cannot imagine a more provocative and irresponsible approach than to mobilize military forces during the crucial moment for any nation’s democratic life,” he said and added
“billions of dollars of Russian money came into Georgia’s election campaign; lots of other resources were allocated and now these are the Russian troops trying to be some kind of background payers in this process. That is why today I call on all of our allies and friends not to ignore and dismiss this worrisome development,” he said. “I would like to use this opportunity to ask the world to pay attention… to speak in unified voice against these threats and in support of our sovereignty, democratic institutions.”
In the end Saakashvili talked about the upcoming elections.
Describing the October 1 parliamentary elections as “crucial” Saakashvili said that these polls would be more free and fair then previous ones.
“I came here to tell you that Georgia will remain an open society – this is the choice of our citizens and there is no alternative to this,” he said. “Georgia has conducted several elections in recent years all of which were observed by international observers and all of which were free and fair.”
