Saakashvili elaborates on successes achieved during his rule

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has opened another new hospital, this time in Gori. Praising the accessibility of such clinics for the population President Saakashvili said that in past times such facilities were only available for the families and relatives of corrupt officials, while ordinary citizens lacked medical treatment, electricity, education, etc. Explaining how he doesn’t like to remember the bad things in life Saakashvili said that he has forgotten the faces of the individuals who used to “rob” the people during former President Eduard Shevardnadze’s governance.

As President Saakashvili said, it’s a normal instinct to want to forget everything unpleasant, but now those same people have regrouped, resentfully trying to oppose the country’s forward development and hoping to return to power. “The Georgian people got rid of them a long time ago and those sorts of people won’t ever return to Georgian politics while Georgia is progressing,” the President said, highlighting the successes the country has achieved during the last several years since the Georgian-Russian War in 2008.

Comparing the situations the two neighbouring countries are currently facing on both domestic and foreign fronts, Saakashvili said that despite the high amount of their gas and oil reserves Russia is still falling behind Georgia in many ways. “Our enemy is becoming crazy,” he said, referring to Russia. “We have answered their aggression through a process of rehabilitation,” he said.

Aware of the level of poverty many people in Georgia are still experiencing Saakashvili recollected how medical services used to be largely unavailable in the past, the education system was broken up and people received just GEL 7 as a pension. Promising to deal with all the country’s problems step by step the President said that Georgia would continue moving forwards.

As he said, there have not been so many large-scale construction activities in the country as those following the August War in 2008, since the 11th-12th centuries. Comparing the occupied regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia with the capital Tbilisi in the 11th century under King Davit the Builder, Saakashvili noted that King Davit carried out a lot of reforms during his 34 years in an attempt to return Tbilisi to a united Georgia.

“This epoch wasn’t defined by its ruler, but by all the people who came together to unite their country,” Saakashvili said, adding that people during Shevardnadze’s time used to live in a formal state of freedom where everything was actually “privatized” by officials. Nowadays though, new hospitals and clinics, educational reform where children are starting to use netbooks and learn English, and rehabilitated towns and cities are all tangible achievements which the President says are making a significant improvement to people’s lives.