The president of Georgia’s final address to parliament 'disappointing'

The President of Georgia Giorgi Margvelashvili addressed parliament today with his annual report. This will be his last, as Georgia is holding presidential elections in autumn of 2018.

The speech lasted for forty minutes. He noted a number of negative occurrences in the country: high unemployment, politicised courts, a media sector working under pressure and a lack of serious reforms.

The ruling Georgian Dream party said his speech was ‘populistic’, while the opposition said that his speech failed to touch on a number of important points and was too ‘soft’.

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“We live in a country where most of the people are unemployed”

Margvelashvili said that he does not believe the official statistics regarding unemployment, and that most residents of Georgia are ‘unemployed and have empty refrigerators’.

He also mentioned unsafe labour conditions in the country.

“The situation concerning employment is currently so [dire] that our citizens are ready to risk their lives at work just to keep their jobs. Some have work that can be fatal. I’m not even talking about safety, just employment alone,” Margvelashvili said.

“The courts and security agencies are politicised”

Margvelashvili also said that the security agencies and court system of Georgia remain politically dependent.

He pointed out that the Georgian Dream party had promised to investigate a number of ‘big cases’ but had failed to do so. In particular, he named the case of the death of the PM of Georgia Zurab Zhvania in 2005 and President Zviad Gamsakhurdia in 1993.

He also brought up the case of the death of an eight-month-old girl in 2012, Barbara Rafalyants, before the parliamentary elections of 2012. At the time, the Georgian Dream leadership accused supporters of Saakashvili’s party of her death. Margvelashvili also mentioned the disappearance of Azerbaijani opposition journalist Afgan Mukhtarli, who was kidnapped from Tbilisi in May 2017.

Margvelashvili also said that he does not believe that these cases will be investigated because there are ‘old cadres of dubious reputation’ that remain within the country’s security agencies.

He said that the Georgian Dream party had failed to implement serious court reforms and put them aside for an undefined period of time.

“The court system is very difficult to reform and it can’t be done in a day. But it was our duty to create a basis on which we could have changed the system,” the president said.

Russia as a threat

Margvelashvili said that Russia is in ‘an aggressive phase of its development’ but that the ‘strategically expecting’ [Russia’s moves] policy which Georgia has chosen was the correct approach.

“One of the main aims is to not give in to Russia’s provocations and not allow Russia to use force against our country,” Margvelashvili noted.

He also noted that Russia as a threat is still not ‘fully recognised’ in Georgia. As an example, he cited the decision to abolish the Security Council. Margvelashvili said that the decision was political because the ruling party had come into conflict with the institute of the presidency. [Ed. The security council under the presidency was abolished according to constitutional law].

“The media encounters many problems”

Margvelashvili said that the current government does not use force against the media, unlike the previous one. However, that does not mean that it does not cause problems for journalists and the media.

“Ask people who work in the media – they work in an environment of pressure, in an environment of anticipating what difficulties might be ahead.”

“There are no real political forces”

Margvelashvili said that in 2016 the government purposely weakened and destroyed the political opposition. He says that while things have changed in recent years and that the government is no longer an ‘aggressor’ that is feared by citizens, not a single reform has gone through that would provide for the strengthening of the political opposition.

Both the government and the opposition have criticised the president for his speech

Giorgi Kvirikashvili was not a fan of the president’s speech.

Kvirikashvili said that he had expected ‘a deeper, more analytical and concentrated speech’. Other members of the government spoke similarly.

“This was a speech by a person who was too lazy to speak,” said Nukri Kantaria, a member of the parliamentary majority. Independent MP Salome Zurabishvili had the impression that the president was preparing for the upcoming presidential elections and his speech was part of his election campaign.

The opposition says that it did not expect anything special from Margvelashvili. However, it did criticise his silence and failure to touch on serious problems.

“The president didn’t speak about kidnappings in the occupied territories, neither about the murder of Archil Tatunashvili nor about the increase in crime. He didn’t speak about political persecution or the informal rule of Ivanishvili,” said David Bakradze, the leader of European Georgia.

United National Movement [Mikheil Saakashvili’s party -ed] member Nika Melia said that Margvelashvili’s speech was ‘original’.

“What Margvelashvili did is impossible to imagine. He was the president for five years and he presented a report that was just completely empty. He didn’t speak about the real challenges,” Nika Melia said.