President’s autumn messages from Anaklia

On September 3 just a few days before the autumn session of parliament, President Saakashvili met with the parliamentary majority in Anaklia on the Black Sea Coast. The entire country was able to watch him talking to his team members with the Black Sea and a patrol boat in the background - a very impressive picture. Of course the president spoke on his favourite topic – tourism, highlighting Anaklia's prospects in this regards. Saakashvili talked about foreign as well as domestic policy, concentrating on the issue of the confrontation with Russia mentioning that Russia has exhausted itself in doing harm to Georgia – a very optimistic statement. The President commented that Russia’s motivation against Georgia is in reality due to the fact that from a development point of view Georgia is Russia's main rival in the former Soviet Union arena. He also thinks that the reforms in Georgia directly oppose Russia’s imperialistic policy, although in some areas the Georgian President believes that Moscow is trying to imitate some of Georgia’s reforms in particular regarding the police.

Yet another optimistic statement made by Saakashvili was that before August 2008 the Kremlin was planning to create problems in Georgia, while since then Russia itself has been facing an increasing number of problems.

Commenting on domestic issues Saakashvili focused on the changes to the constitution. He mentioned the changes themselves, stressing the reasons for the amendments and the creation of a European type document. He rejected allegations that his team is planning a kind of 'Putinisation' for Georgia. He also did not accept the Venice commission’s recommendation that advised Georgia to weaken the presidential power; to the contrary Saakashvili thinks that our country should have a strong presidential institute. As has been reported previously, some of the opposition are against a hasty adoption of current constitution and are prepared to launch protest actions; they are critical of Saakashvili and his administration. The president also was quite aggressive about the opposition calling the opposition actions of April -June 2009 unpatriotic and against the Georgian statehood. Saakashvili reported that the Austrian police had confirmed that the Georgian opposition was financed by the Georgian-Russian mafia in Europe. Since May's local elections Saakashvili feels very confident and is not making any concessions to the opposition; an opposition that remains segmented into small portions and where opposition personalities still appear unable to give up personal ambitions and interests for the sake of unification for the common good.