Saakashvili Hopes Unanimous Opposition Boycott will Fail

President Saakashvili said he believed unanimous opposition boycott would fail and called again on the opposition for a dialogue.

“Everyone should respect the Georgian people’s position,” he said at a news conference after meeting with the Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, in Tbilisi.

“We offer a hand of dialogue to everybody. I do not think that all representatives of the opposition will not enter the parliament. I am sure that very many representatives of the opposition will be in the parliament,” Saakashvili said.

“The Georgian people gave us more than two-thirds of their votes. It is good that it has happened, because otherwise there would have been an intention to block the parliament’s activities.”

The ruling party won two-third majority in the new parliament, which means that the ruling party has more than enough seats in the parliament to convene the new legislative body’s first session and the opposition’s boycott, from the legal point of view, would fail to thwart it.

“Everything is solved by the society and everything is solved by majority of votes,” Saakashvili said. “But it does not mean that the majority should not respect the minority, but on the other hand, the minority should also respect the will of the majority. Dialogue is the only alternative. Nothing will threaten Georgian institutions. The parliament has been elected. The Georgian parliament will defend the interests of entire Georgia regardless of whether some voted for it or not.”

He also said: “I express my gratitude to those voters, who voted for us and to those voters, who gave their votes to other political parties, because I am the President of Georgia and for me there is no difference between mine and not mine, in a wide meaning of this word.”

“We all are members of our society, representing multi-ethnic, multi-national, multi-political, multi-pluralistic groups. I think that we should not talk to each other in the language of ultimatums. We should talk to each other through dialogue. I think that when Georgia is in extremely difficult situation from international point of view, when entire democratic world supports Georgia, this is the background where even the smallest, but most radical group, should find its place, but also should find the way to hold a dialogue and reach mutual understanding.”