Ladies and gentlemen,

My fellow citizens,

Exactly 9 years ago, the Rose Revolution opened a new era in the History of our beloved nation.

Back then, people took the streets against a rigged election and a system based on corruption and opacity, they took the streets against crime and lawlessness, against humiliations and poverty.

They wanted - you wanted Georgia to become a democratic State based on the rule of law and your children to have new opportunities, new perspectives and your families to live without fear.

You wanted, we all wanted to bring back Georgia to the European family of free and prosperous nations it should never have been separated from.

During these 9 years, as you know it too well, we went through many crisis, we faced many obstacles and we, all of us together, we had to overcome many difficulties. We all have known successes and failures.

But all of us, we have survived, progressed together and managed to create a new State, with strong institutions, to open a new path for our nation and to improve dramatically the society in which we live.

This is our collective achievement. We have tasted again what it means to build and not to destroy anymore.

Our History is a succession of eras when things are built and when things are destroyed, when people focus on the future and when people focus on the past.

And I am confident that the times we are living since 2003 have opened a long period of collective building, a long period of building and building again, without time or energy for destroying, until we have reached our common and ultimate goal: a prosperous, democratic and European home for our families and for our children.

For all of us, majority, minority, non-political people, this should be our main, our only focus as I speak.

Not the ghosts of the past or the bitter taste of frustrating personal memories, but the promises of the future, the hopes of our people to improve their personal living conditions and the general shape of our nation.

We have created a framework in which growth can be sustainable, in which individuals can pursuit happiness without fear, a framework in which elections can be won or lost democratically, in which governments come and go without hanging on to power, in which you – the citizens of Georgia – are the ultimate decision makers, a framework in which the institutions, your institutions stand above and not below the political forces, the social groups or the private interests.

My dear friends: since when didn’t it happen in our History? Since when were we so free to make our choices for ourselves, our families, our nation, without foreign domination or internal manipulations from a corrupt elite?

Your relation to the State, the government, the bureaucracy and all other institutions has changed so dramatically that no return to the past is possible.

This is, Ladies and gentlemen, the core achievement of the Rose Revolution: you are so much empowered and you have built such strong institutions that no matter who wins or loses general or local elections, no matter who is in majority or in minority, your leaders are accountable to you, to you only and to you fully, since you are the only owners of your State, of your life, of your future. Your leaders have to deliver what they promised you and respond to your expectations. Or they will face disillusions. Because they owe you and you do not owe them.

I got involved in politics specifically for this: to give back the power to the people. And now, people have the power, not this or that group of the political or the social elite.

You have shown it in the last elections and you will show it in the elections to come as well.

Nothing can change this, nobody can privatize the State and the institutions again, no political force or social group is able to reverse the course of History and steal back what is the property of the people: the power to make and unmake majorities, governments, policies...

I hear the voices of bitterness when I turn on my TV, I listen to the calls for some kind of revenge when I open my radio, I see the wave of arrests and I understand the worrying signals that are sent in so many areas.

But I have this flaw: I am obsessed with the future rather than with the past and I am always optimistic when it comes to my nation and to you, my fellow citizens.

I am confident that there is no way back to the times where the past was obstructing the future, when private frustrations could hamper public interest. I am confident that the past decade will be followed by another decade of progress towards our collective goals.

You have voted for a new majority and we handed over more power to the new government than what was required by the existing constitution. Because we want them to be able to govern, to deliver on the promises that they made to you, we want them to be in charge so that they can deliver and be held accountable.

Delivering on promises made to the people should occupy all the time and the energy of all government official.

I know how hard it is to govern and to meet people’s expectation. I know that there is no time and no energy to lose in trying to destroy or undo things when you have so many things to do and to build. So I call on everybody to work for the people and for the future rather than focusing on the past and on rivalries.

This is my strong hope and my absolute wish: we are living in a wonderful nation and we owe everything to this nation, we owe to our ancesters and our children to spend our time and our energy trying to improve our country.

9 years ago, we opened together a new page of our common History, this page is still open and we should all write it together, not one against each other. Because we are all Georgians and we all love Georgia.