"Conversations with Global Leaders"
Presentation by President Mikheil Saakashvili
Introduction
Good evening everyone. It is actually a great pleasure to be here.
I would like to thank Dr. Alon Ben-Meir for inviting me-I am always delighted to address students in New York. It reminds me of my years here and fills me with energy and optimism. Even if Ieel a bit old lookng at you.....
I love to exchange views with the young leaders of tomorrow, because you generally still think that radical changes are necessary and possible- that today's dreams can become tomorrow's reality.
This is exactly the spirit have been keeping alive in the Georgian government since the Rose Revolution of 2003.
I would like to share with you some lessons I have drawn from Georgia's recent metamorphosis - hoping to feeyour appetite for noble politics, understood as a way of turning ideals into realities.
Taking the risk of a value-based politics
Seven years ago, Georgia was basically a failed state. An entrenched bureaucracy was killing any initiative in the society. There was crippling unemployment and poverty-crumbling and inadequate infrastructure-an economy shackled by corruption.
The situation was so catastrophic that we had to start In a way, it was our chance.
Aware that half-steps and over-cautious measures would be just drops in the ocean-an ocean in which Georgia was sinking quickly- we decided to turn our nation but very young independent Sate into a laboratory for reforms.
Who were we? Nothing more and nothing less than a group of idealist young men and women from student organizations, opposition parties, or civil society groups.
From one day to the next we were in charge - in a very hostile geopolitical environment, with an increasingly authoritarian and revisionist Russian Federation at our door.
Slogans and protests and policy papers-the tools we used as opposition and civil society leaders-would no longer suffice.
What could we do? Were we just going to take over, replacing the old generation with a new one to basically do the same things over and over- happens? Or were we going to stay true to our dreams and to of all the people who bravely came into the streets to overthrow the previous regime?
We took the risk of at least trying to turn our values into concrete policies.
Of course we did not succeed in everything-and we made mistakes.
As one of my favorite philosophers - Emmanuel Kant - wrote: "You cannot be ready to be free until you are free"- which means that there is no book to teach you how to behave or govern in freedom and that you can only learn from your own successes and failures.
It means that freedom is always a risk, but a risk you must take if you want to be an actor in your own life and in your nation's destiny.
There was no book to guide us on how to turn a failed post-Soviet state into a modern European democracy.
But we took the risk of a values-based politics.
And, today, development specialists and regional leaders-- including Russians, as surprising as that might sound- come to our country in search of ideas on new ways to address old problems.
Some generously say Georgia's success is due to "transformational leadership."
In reality, transformational leadership means that my government systematically decided to empower people, to allow them to change their own lives and their social environment.
This is the way you can transform a society without gulags or guillotines- by allowing initiatives- by giving to individuals and groups a say and a stake in their nation destiny.
"Georgia's mental revolution"
Most people who visit Georgia for the first time are surprised by the age of our ministers and senior government officials. We are in fact a nation run by 30-year-olds. Sometimes even 20-year-olds. This is both the result and the cause of what The Economist recently characterized as Georgia's "mental revolution."
Georgians have stopped thinking of their country as a post-Soviet state.
Before, we felt imprisoned by our past. Now, we feel liberated by the promise of the future.
And with this radical transformation of minds and souls, we have laid the foundations for social justice and economic success.
This is our great victory: creating something that goes far beyond the leaders and parties that led the Rose Revolution-far beyond any leadership, as transformational as it might be- something that nobody owns and nobody can suppress, neither us nor anybody else. A change of paradigms, a mental revolution.
From values to concrete policies
I will help explain this by giving you a few examples of some of our most unexpected but successful reforms.
Our first comprehensive reform was the total change of our law enforcement bodies. We started by firing our entire traffic police force. People thought we were impulsive, naïve, crazy even.
But the police had long been a centerpiece and symbol of the state's corruption and intimidation. A complete overhaul was our only realistic choice if we wanted to implement different policies.
Georgians lived for three months without traffic police-and amazingly, during this very period, crime rates went down by 70%. Why?
Because people felt that they were part of History, that they were living this very specific moment of one nation's history, when everything seems possible, when values become the basis of politics, when you have the feeling of inventing your own future.
Thanks to these initial measures, since 2003, we have made greater progress on Transparency International's Corruption Index than any other state in the world.
A second crucial and symbolic reform was the transformation of the energy sector.
This was a country that had so many blackouts that we were counting the hours when we had electricity and not the opposite. Within a few years, we became a net energy producer and exporter. We developed hydroelectric resources and the infrastructure needed to transmit this new power across Georgia and to our neighbors.
A little-known fact is that we transmit power at standard market rates into Russia. Even during the August War in 2008, when Russia was invading us, we continued to transmit this power. We did this because of another aspect of our mental revolution: we refuse to see the economy as a political tool. We believe that politics has its limits and that government should not interfere.
We have built a highly favorable investment climate based on three key factors: minimal economic regulation, low taxes, and, as I mentioned, strong anti-corruption enforcement.
Georgia is a small nation that is remote from commercial centers and financial capitals, in a shaky geopolitical environment-to put it mildly.
Our only chance to attract investors was to become a kind of regional heaven for them. We are now ranked as one of the easiest places in the world to do business, 11th in the world and first in Central and Eastern Europe, according to the World Bank.
Before the invasion of 2008, we had consistent double-digit growth and record levels of foreign investment. A testament to the depth and soundness of our economic reforms is that, two years after the war and during the global economic downturn, we still expect to grow about 6% this year-in fact, today it was announced that our GDP growth was 6.6% in the first half of 2010.
There is still a lot to be done obviously, and we are more committed than ever to pursue our path of reform and democratization. And all this despite the permanent provocations coming from the North.
An alternative model for the region
As many of you may know, two Georgian regions, about 20% of our total territory, are currently occupied by Russia.
There has been extensive coverage of this fact since 2008.
But it is worth noting that there were once three areas in Georgia that were artificially separated from the rest of the nation when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Today, while South Ossetia and Abkhazia are isolated from the world, Adjara, the third region, has become a centerpiece of the new Georgian economy-a flourishing second economic center for our country that is gaining the attention of investors from around the world. Last year, the 150,000-person town of Batumi received $4 billion in private investments.
I am sure all regions of Georgia, including Abkhazia and South Ossetia, will someday benefit from this development.
I also hope one day to be able to have normal and productive conversations with our neighbor to the north. Their occupation of our territories is unsustainable. The economic, military, and political costs are increasingly unpopular in Moscow and I hope that Russia will modernize, change, and become a key partner of an independent and European Georgia.
But for that to happen, the Russian leadership has to understand that development requires the respect of basic rules and values.
That you cannot diversify your economy if you send to the Gulag your most successful businessmen, like Mikheil Khodorkovski.
That you cannot create a dynamic society if you kill your most talented journalists, like Anna Politkovskaya, and your bravest human rights activists, like Natalia Estamirova.
That, last but not least, you cannot be considered as a rational international player if you invade and dismember your neighbor, if your army is leading ethnic cleansing campaigns.
People might have thought in our region that there was the choice only between a Yeltsin type of chaos and a Putin style of order. Georgia has shown that another path is possible.
And what looked idealistic 7 years ago has proved to be more than realistic.
I hope this helps you to believe that you can change the world, that true politics and values go together,
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.