I want to greet everyone here and congratulate the whole nation, my dear compatriots, on this great St. George's Day. Let me wish you many new, great victories on the many St. George's days to come.

You know that two years ago we, all of us together, managed to turn Georgia - a country forgotten by everyone and doomed to be ridiculed, when no-one believed, including many of our compatriots, that it could have any future - into an example to be followed by the whole world. I am saying this without any exaggeration. What we started in [the Georgian towns of] Zugdidi and Telavi, what we started here, in the parliament building, later spread to Ukraine - my friend Viktor Yushchenko is here and he will not let me lie to you - and spread to other post-Soviet countries. It spread to the Arab world, it spread to other continents, Africa and Latin America, and everyone has learnt where Georgia is.

Georgia set an example to the whole world with its courage, generosity, love of freedom, self-respect and dignity. Our nation is a special nation. Our freedom is a special freedom. We still have a great battle ahead of us. We have found freedom, the freedom to express our opinions, the freedom to choose our own representatives, the freedom to be masters of our own land, but we need patience. We have achieved great successes, but this is just a tenth of what needs to be done. Everything is still ahead.

Our task, which we have begun with you, and will be continued by our children and by all of us, so that Georgia is finally saved, so that Georgia finds the ultimate freedom that we are entitled to.

Therefore, I again want to congratulate you, our country and the whole free world on this great day. Yesterday we joined in Ukraine's celebration and Viktor Yushchenko said that the Ukrainian revolution was a continuation of Georgia's revolution. Our freedom is not yet complete - our brothers, our territories, our Abkhazia, our Tskhinvali [South Ossetia], still demand freedom. The wave of freedom and democracy, which we began here in Tbilisi, which continued in Batumi on the second St George's Day [Georgia has two, on 23 November and 6 May], will certainly continue through the whole of Georgia and the whole of the former Soviet Union.

Europe's new wave of liberation, which we began with our friends, will have the final victory. Today we are again being looked on by Europe and the rest of the world as never before. I want to tell you that we have a lot still ahead of us and we need back-breaking work, we need to make a huge effort to ensure that we do not go backwards, we need to make a huge effort to triumph over the evil forces which are still fighting freedom among us and around us. Then we will finally be victorious and we will finally be free.

I congratulate you on St George's Day and the second anniversary of our revolution.

I would again like to present to you the true hero of 23 November. It is not us - Zurab Zhvania, who is no longer with us, Nino Burjanadze, or me. You are the main heroes of these events. You are the people who did this. I would like to pay homage to our multi-ethnic nation, our multi-ethnic Georgia. I am certain that we will finally be victorious in the sight of the world.

Congratulations on St. George's Day and revolution day.

Thank you.

This translation is published with permission from BBC Monitoring, Reading UK

Communications Office
of the President of Georgia