Saakashvili’s New Year Address

In his New Year message to the nation President Saakashvili said he was sure that “the empire will inevitably fall” and the entire Georgia would be “liberated.”

He said like Jews had been wishing each other to meet ‘next year in Jerusalem’, Georgians too should be telling each other “next year in Sokhumi.”

“I am absolutely sure that the empire will inevitably fall, Georgia will eventually be liberated and I want us to establish the tradition of congratulating each other [New Year] by saying ‘next year in Sokhumi’,” Saakashvili said in his televised address aired few minutes before the midnight on December 31.

Saakashvili said that 2011 was “an important year for Georgia”.
 
“We have achieved serious progress in many directions,” he said. “Georgia’s economy has been developing at a faster pace than those of most of the countries in the region. We have continued carrying out our reforms with a very fast pace.”

“In 2008 our enemy thought that [Georgia] was leveled to the ground, but in recent years an opinion has been firmly established throughout the entire post-Soviet space – in Ukraine, in Central Asia, among our neighbors and even in Russia – that Georgia is an absolute leader in terms of carrying out reforms and fighting corruption.”

“This is a very important response to the aggression, which was carried out against us,” Saakashvili said.

“We have the most state-of-the art customs service, the most state-of-the art tax service, the most successful, transparent young state apparatus oriented on being in service of the people and I am very much proud of that.”

He said, that in 2011 “everyone in the European Union seriously started talking that Georgia should become in following years full-fledged member of the EU and this is a real geopolitical revolution.”

“Although many did not believe, but last year we have seriously advanced and made it possible to deliver without our huge promise of building dozens of modern hospitals accessible for absolute majority of the Georgian population,” said Saakashvili, who has been travelling actively throughout the regions in recent weeks during which he opened over dozen of new medical centers built by the insurance companies.
 
He also said that “despite of hardship, despite of problems and despite of the fact that Georgia has to fight with the invader with its one hand and to build the country with another,” Georgia had managed to launch rebuilding process of the scale not seen in the country for last eight centuries.

 Georgia had not built so many things “in last eight centuries” than  never in recent eight centuries so many things have been built simultansiouly than in recent years.