Greetings everyone!

Today is a historic day for Georgian statehood.

This is the day when we are opening the largest scale, the most beautiful building of the executive branch of the Georgian Government.

This is a building which fully belongs to each ordinary citizen of Georgia and is designed not for serving the government and comforting it, but to fully serve each ordinary citizen of Georgia, each member of our society.

This building stands in the center of Tbilisi today as a symbol of the new relation that has been created here between the people and the government - a government which exists only to serve the people.

The government per se, is nothing: it has value only as long as it serves the people. The people are everything.

The citizens are the true masters.

This is why this building exists: for the government to serve the citizens. This is really a citizen's house, and such a large scale project was implemented for the first time in Georgia.

It stands here as both a symbol and an efficient tool of a service oriented bureaucracy, an absolute antithesis to what government was in the past, and to what government still is in other parts of the world and of our region.

It is the absolute antithesis to the Gldani prison number 8 – unfortunately this shameful remnant of the past in Georgia.

This glass building is a symbol of transparency versus opacity, the new open bureaucracy versus the old soviet methods, the new State versus the old State.

It is the future against the past.

And let me be clear today: we will make sure than no practice of the past remains in our institutions. We will make sure that what was a success in police, in tax service, in customs, in so many other fields will be contagious to all the government bodies. 

And not the contrary: we will not let horrific practices destabilize the rest of the body.

I am standing in front of you today as a President who once made a promise to his nation.

This promise was that never again would Georgia be governed as it was in the past, that never again would Georgia be under foreign domination or under the rule of those who have no respect for the law or the citizens, that young generations would not even have memories of the taste of slavery or lawlessness, that the government would always take responsibilities for its failures to serve the people and protect their rights.

I am standing here and I tell you: we are close to having fulfilled our promise, despite all of the difficulties and obstacles.

The most horrible crimes that we all saw a few days ago, and the failure of a system have led to public outcry. I personally shared this outcry, and the government has listened to the public, as it always should. 

Unfortunately such things happen in many countries more developed than ours, and they don’t even make them public. I am not justifying anything by this, but I just want to say that everything has become public here and this is how it should be.

This is how democracy works. This is how government works in the 21^st century.

Actions have been started that will reshape the whole system that has failed us so dramatically.

I am proud to see here the former ombudsman, Minister Turushi who will be in charge of this essential task.

The police will help him in his essential task, and I am proud to see here our new minister Ekaterine Zguladze.

You represent both the future of this nation, as well as this institution of the Public Service Hall.

You are the future and I count on you, as your President, to eradicate the dark reminiscences of our past and to protect our future. You all represent our future, every person who works here.

As President I have a very specific obligation to fully eliminate remnants of the past in the system. The remnants which remain, in the ugliest form possible and we should free the way for innovation. This hollow space must be filled with novelties, new mentality, new thinking, and a feeling of new statehood. The things which Eka Zguladze, Giorgi Tugushi and our boys and girls represent, is what the new Georgia represents.

We know that the presence of such criminal people in the prisons was our responsibility from the very beginning.

Former road policemen, who have turned into sadists, were working there. They were doing these horrible things with lower level personnel and filming this for money.

But who was paying money? Somebody must ask this question? For whom were they keeping all of this? For whom was this happening during several months in conditions when we didn’t notice it? This is why two ministers and several public officials have paid for this. But these materials were being kept for the elections, but why for these specific elections? Because they want these elections to return Georgia to the past irreversibly; to the past which we are all trying to escape.

This is the difference between our understanding and the thing that we all represent together.

However, I would like to tell you that they will not achieve the result no matter how much dirty money they spend.

We know very well what is going on. None of us are blind, and we know how much Russian money is being spent, Russian methods used; a war of leverage has begun and people are using a Russian style campaign in order to return Georgia to the past, to the Russian empire’s space.

You have all seen our response to this matter. Of course there were shortcomings and tragedies, but children of each one of us are walking in the streets safely today.

They are showing you what happened in one or several facilities, and they are telling you that this is a common practice. They are trying to make fools out of you by this.

I want all of us to turn off the television sets for a moment and look in the streets. Do we or do we not let our children walk there safely? Are our streets better? Are our schools better?  Is anybody invading our homes and taking away our rights?

When we enter state institutions are there people of the past who are looking at us expecting bribes? Or do we have a new state apparatus?

Let’s decide. Do we want to return to the past, and turn all of Georgia into the Gldani prison #8 quarantine department? Is this the choice? This will be decided in the next 10 days.

I am worried the least about politics these days, but I am not an ostrich to hide my head in the sand. I know what is being decided for Georgia.

Of course the occupant of our territories wants to use these elections in order to finish the affair which it began in 2008, in conditions where there is currently influx of large sums of Russian money, Russian methods, lots of Russian army units around our border, administering very dangerous maneuvers.

We all know this very well.

Everybody was shocked in the last few days, but after shock now is the time for opening eyes and thinking.

I know very well that whatever is being shown these days are isolated facts, and they have surfaced right before the election because they were hiding this for months.

If they had shown even one video to Giorgi Tugushi back then he would have dried our blood with it, and he would have finished all this right after viewing the first tape, because he was hunting for materials like that. But no, they filmed them for money and earned money by selling these tapes to organized crime representatives as it now appears.

They should have shown at least one video through television, and everything would end on the first day, and everyone guilty would have been punished.

But no, they kept going, they had orders, filming and saving these tapes for the elections so that the Georgian society would not think about, before the elections, that people should have common insurance, that we must overcome unemployment, we must create a future for our children, that criminals and thieves in law must never return to Georgia, what have been changes towards the good in Georgia. They wanted our people to make an impulsive choice instead, and finally free the way for those who want to return Georgia to the past.

This is what’s being decided today.

When a young person is astonished by what they have seen on television, I understand that person very well and thank God we have youth like that, but those who have paid money for this and those who have closed their eyes during this, must not receive dividends.

Those who are using the Russian style leverage war must not be able to take away the Georgian public’s attention from the most important topics that we are trouble by.

We have created a modern government and by the way, a German philosopher - Hegel - said that enlightened streets are the sign of a modern government and protect the safety of the people much more than thousands of soldiers.

This is namely of our new state apparatus.

And to follow Hegel, the light will be more efficient than thousands of soldiers to expose and defeat these forces hiding from the public scrutiny and enjoying their dreams of violence that are a nations nightmare.

I know very well that organized crime is trying to return Georgia to the past.

This is not news, and we know a lot about this. We know very well how they are preparing for this.

We also know how the Georgian mafia around the world was preparing for these elections and what kind of plans they had.

Whatever we have seen now was a small part of their plans. We are talking about topics that our people are worried more about: like healthcare, unemployment, strengthening villages, the future of our children, education, new universities, new seaports, new airports…of course we will do everything in order for our people to have all the information about their plots, and what kind of methods they are going to use in order to take Georgia to a dead end.

I want to ask our people once again:

Who do you trust more to protect your rights? Do you trust Ekaterine Zguladze more who is sitting here, who knows what justice means because she also knows what injustice means? Do you want Ekaterine Zguladze, Giorgi Tugushi, Vano Merabishvili, Zurab Adeishvili to be replaced by criminals like Tamazashvili, who has been linked to several criminal activities which were possible by our inattentiveness and bad work of our government bodies? 

Who will protect your rights better? Tugushi, Zguladze, or Tamazashvili?

Who will make Georgia advance?

Is it those who say that we should lie down to our conqueror, who is irritated by glass buildings, who want to demolish this bridge as well as the new parliament building in Kutaisi?

Or those who have created all of this so that Georgia would have a new state apparatus, every region of Georgia would advance and the country would keep advancing?

Who will be a greater supporter of a democratic government?

Those who are using every dirty method to obtain power and harass every institution, think day and night how to discredit them and undermine them…

Or those who are building this state; built a large part of these state institutions, tries to turn them into larger scale projects and make Georgia advance even more?

 I have little doubt how our honorable nation will respond. 

But our society will do everything in the conditions of transparency and freedom and not in the conditions of manipulations, threats, and various provocations which are designed for confusing the society and making it forget the most important topics and make our prospects disappear.

There are people who look down at their citizens like slaves and servants but this time has come to an end forever, because nobody will be able to return us to the past by manipulations and dirty Russian methods.

An incredibly great building stands behind me, and I know very well that the people who live in this district do not have homes as well accommodated as this building, and this is not the worst thing that is currently going on around us.

I know very well that the people living here have a lot of problems. There is unemployment, shortage of high salaries, a lot of people do not have medical insurance but half of the Georgian population already has it.

They want their children to have a higher quality education, which we all want.

They would like for such horrible facts that we saw in the last few days not to happen.

I know all of this, but even for each one of them this new building is a beacon of hope. This Public Service Hall and the others, as well as the new Parliament building in Kutaisi, which nobody can demolish or make disappear from the Imereti region; just like the new police buildings we have built and the future penitentiary system which we will completely restructure with the help of Giorgi Tugushi.

We will show the difference from these horrible facts that we have seen.

This building represents the new Georgia which cannot be changed by provocations, dirty tricks, manipulations, billions in imported money, and armies of the potential conqueror at our borders.

Georgia will definitely win.

The Georgian nation will definitely advance and dark forces will finally disappear once and for all, because this is not their place, a place for their ideas, and their world view and a place of their practice…

This must be completely changed in the new system and new institutions forever.

This is the main experience of today.

I want to congratulate you on this day.

I was waiting for this day for a long time. This is a house of my dreams and none of us: Zurab, Eka, Giorgi, Davit Sakvarelidze or Giorgi Vashadze, who was the main reformer of this system under the supervision of Zurab Adeishvili, would be able to build a better house.

None of us would be able to build a better house than this Public Service Hall.

This is our home, your home, the home of Georgia and Georgia will be unified, successful, strong, beautiful and a very well organized home, where the life of every member of our society will be just as comfortable as this building which we have opened together.

Thank you.