The President of Georgia attended a presentation of the book which is related to the reforms and anti-corruption measures administered in Georgia since the “Rose Revolution”, at the World Bank building. Mikheil Saakashvili addressed the audience and answered their questions.

Asad Alam:

Good afternoon ladies and gentleman. Welcome to this special event of the World Bank. My name is Asad Alam. I’m the Country Director of South Caucasus. I hope you all picked up a copy of this book, which is freely available outside.

Special greetings to President Saakashvili of Georgia and his delegation who have come here today to launch this book.

This book chronicles anti-corruption reforms that have really transformed public services in Georgia since the Rose Revolution, in 2003. I can confidently speak about this because I live in Tbilisi and I use the results of many of these public services reforms. But the book goes beyond all reforms to look at how successful they were in select public service areas.

It answers questions such as: How did the new government make these reforms happen?  How did Georgia succeed where many other countries failed?

But what makes Georgia’s story unique is the comprehensiveness of anti-corruption reforms, the boldness, their pace and their sequence. Georgia has proved that with strong political will, success in fighting corruption can be achieved in a relevantly short period of time. But by no means is the fight over, much still remains to be done especially with respect to institutions.

As we all know the development of institutions takes much longer and they play a larger role in the process.  But institutions are essential for the sustainability of these reforms. I encourage you to read this book and assess for yourself what aspects of Georgia’s experience could be replicated in the countries where you work.

Thank you

Philippe Le Houérou- Vice President for Europe and Central Asia Region:

Dear President Saakashvili, I’m delighted to welcome you this afternoon at World Bank for the launch of Georgia’s anti-corruption report.

During my visit to Georgia in June, 2010, I was attracted by the rapid transformation that had been taking place in the past few years and by the bold improvements in public service delivery. I vividly recall our wonderful dinner on the Terrace of the Kobuleti Hotel of Batumi; this is by the Black Sea. It was in fact then, there, that the idea was hatched of documenting Georgia’s story, so that this experience could be recorded and broadly shared with others.

Today we are happy to present this book to the World Bank’s audience and to our international partners. We are especially honored that you can be with us, to share your experience of the anti-corruption reforms in Georgia. President Saakashvili needs no introduction at the World Bank, some of you I’m sure may recall the President’s visit to the bank 10 years ago, as the Minister of Justice at that time. He spoke about justice reforms and fighting corruption, then he came back and challenged the cabinet meeting with the picture of property and wealth that government officials were decimating. Decades later, we are looking forward to hearing his fascinating insights of taking on corruption in Georgia. Dear guests and dear colleagues please welcome the President of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili.

The President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili

Thank you Phillipe, I’m very humbled indeed, because actually the book was your idea, Assad, and you did an amazing job writing it. It describes everything better than anything I could have ever written in the future, in seventeen years from now when I write my memoires. You deprived me of my future book sales, but its ok, I am still happy. It is amazing, it’s written like a text book.

As you know, I’m here for two occasions; yesterday I went to the White House to see President Obama. I spent hours with him and Vice-President Biden, and other administration officials for the whole day.  I was very pleased because I heard everything I wanted to hear from them and it’s always nice to leave the White House hearing everything you wanted to hear. They started the process of the free trade agreement which no one around us in the region has with the United States.

Another very important thing that I was very happy to hear and humbled me, was when President Obama said that Georgia has become the model of democracy and transparency for our region and the other countries in the region, and asked if Georgia could make it, why can’t others.

We are especially grateful to Assad and his team for their amazing work; nobody has ever chronicled these reforms better than they did. They were part of it because they understand; they get it, because they have been through it themselves.

It was hard for them to be timelier with all of the events that have taken place in Northern Africa and will take place in Russia too; soon I hope.

I will not go into the details of Assad’s study, and I promise to keep my introduction short. I’d like to answer your questions later, but if there is one message from the study that I would like to single out it is this: Georgia’s success destroys the myth that corruption is cultural and gives hope to reformers everywhere who inspire to clean up their public services. What happened in Georgia was important to my country of course, but it is equally important world wide.

We idealistically believe that our citizens would start to respect the laws of their state, if their state in turn would start to respect them. We believe that when the law would no longer be perceived to be an instrument of pressure, the Georgian people would embrace it, like it, follow it and protect it. So it was not a coincidence that we campaigned on a symbol or slogan “Georgia without Corruption”. At the same time it sounded like a pipe dream, but we were convinced that corruption was at the rotten core of all our problems, and what was more important, we believed that corruption could be defeated.

When a peaceful, popular revolution graciously coined the “Rose Revolution” by CNN, brought us to power in 2003, the situation was so catastrophic that we had to reinvent the Georgian state from scratch. When we came and the treasury was empty we didn’t know from where to start. It was a young team of reformers, and it’s still very young by the way, I was younger at that moment, now I look old for Georgian politics, but the good news is that young ones are coming up. Then, I was also relatively young because I remember Bill Clinton first introduced me to the Davos Forum as “this is a 35 year old president”. He was very encouraging. There was a western journalist who characterized our team at that moment as “Ocean’s Eleven”.

What happens when you are brought in by the revolution wave is that it is always faster than you and it’s also a tide, it ebbs and flows and you better ride the wave, because otherwise it can be destructive. There was no handbook to guide us, now we have a hand book and perhaps others can be guided by it. Assad was a little bit late for us, and I would have loved to have had it in 2004 to read from it.

The book is great, that’s exactly what I think. The main thing that you need is to be armed with experience. The purpose of my travel is 20 percent meeting officials, and 80 percent learning, learning from economic systems. While watching all of this I’m very intrigued. Then you want to replicate these things in your own country. The main thing is to dare to take risks, you should go for it. Life is too short, life without risks is too boring and rewards for accurately taken risks are very high.

Sri Mulyani Indrawati - World Bank Managing Director

Thank you Mr. President, we are glad to finally see you and I have heard a lot about Georgia and its’ story about fighting against corruption. The first words I read in this book were the statement of the President: “You have to just do it, life is related to risks” and I think that this is exactly an element of leadership. You should do everything yourself and especially when you are fighting against corruption, you really have to take that risk. Still I envy Georgia, because this country can fire a whole police department and the situation became better. Without the corrupt police, traffic accidents, as well as all services didn’t disturb the people. I’m impressed that the President can actually fire all of the police, because the police are actually the first, when we have both taxes as well as customs bribery.

I think the last thing that I would like to share is not only the government trying to clean up  their own bureaucracy but it is also important to actually tell the public and the business community that they need to change. And that’s very important for the tax and customs officials. If you behave well, we will serve well too. I would like to close by asking the President- what would you have done differently and what would you offer in advice for the future or for another president? And then secondly; Georgia is small country, but would this kind of experience be different if we apply it to a big country? What do you think about this?

Mikheil Saakashvili: Thank you very much for this generous review of what’s happening in the region. We still have very, very radical reforms. Actually, the main reforms are coming now in terms of the political system of Georgia. I think the biggest lesson I learned although it is not popular to say, but I’m saying it anyway, everywhere, is that I regret every compromise I’ve made. I think I regret every delay. Once you do systemic reforms you go after that in every sphere without delay, without hesitation and that’s the way it works. We never had time, but ultimately you have to make decisions by yourself.

Philippe Le Houérou: When I was in Georgia, I was really astonished to see the police stations built with glass walls, you can see through everything, and I can understand the symbolism.

Mikheil Saakashvili: Actually, several studies have named Georgia as the safest country in Europe for past two years. Iceland was competing with us for a few years, but then they gave up.

Philippe Le Houérou: But it’s amazing that the Ministry of Interior is in glass, I asked the minister if it was because the building was in the nice part of Tbilisi and he was a bit taken back by my remark.  He brought me to the car and we went to the suburbs and indeed it was all in glass there too, all of the police stations have glass walls. But now, let’s turn to the future and let me ask you the question – what is an unfinished agenda according to you?

Mikheil Saakashvili: First of all, I think it’s overall the irreversibility of the reforms. In the end it’s the education system that is bringing up a new generation and this generation should take over, then the whole system will be irreversible. Just mountains, nice climate and the sea are not enough. You need all the rest to be beautiful.

Philippe Le Houérou: That was like Steve Jobs…

Philippe Le Houérou: You mentioned a lot about education and investment in changing of mentality and that’s good. My last question is an obvious question but it’s always difficult to answer. Where do you see Georgian 5 – 8 years from now?

Mikheil Saakashvili: I see Georgia with a modern infrastructure, with high speed trains, all kinds of clean energy, electric cars, and good highways, well developed resorts, and well educated young people, seventy-eighty- hundred story sky-scrapers…It will just look strikingly modern. It will look totally different from eastern and central Europe, as I see they are developing. It’s still a European country, but it will start looking like Singapore visually. It will be a very dynamic and comfortable place to be.