Greetings!
Today we act according to the slogan - work instead of talking! After so much talking we must start using electronic ID cards. I have an honor to hand fist electronic ID cards to several our citizens. Before that I want to say few words about the importance of this event and in general lets deeper analyze everything what happens today. First of all I want to say that in most of countries the first ID card would have been presented to the leader of a country - no matter would it be a monarch, president of prime minister. We are not giving first ID cards to the member of our government or president - but to our citizens. This is the special part of our philosophy.
This is a part of our vision - we want everything for people and not for our government.
The government is for people and not on the contrary
It will symbolically proved today once again.
My friends, we got used to many things in a very simple way.
I travel a lot in various countries - last time I traveled 25 hours in order to get to Georgia and I see many people and many countries. I say it because we got used to the fact that Georgia is such a clean country with perfect order, that there is no corruption and such a low rate of crime... The lives of our citizens are simplified here and we think that it must be this way, but it is nowhere else in the same way all around the world practically. I want to remind you that we have the easiest bureaucratic procedures throughout the world. Also the registration of enterprises is done in the simplest way in Georgia. I want to remind you that our country is the most secured country in Europe, so it is one of the most secured country throughout the world. I also want to remind you that relationship between the government and people is the one of the easiest that anywhere else in the world. All of this was done by the present generation - we were the one, who managed to do this and no one else around the world. We managed to do it all in the conditions when the significant, richest and special part of our territory is under the occupation, when ten percent of our population is internally displaced, when there was destruction, hatred and incredible failure of educational system during the years running... During the years running we had no electricity and Georgia managed to achieve unachievable...
We have to appreciate it all and understand how important is what we had done and how important is what we created. Everything is in direct connection. There are direct ties between "thief mentality", "jigruli live - (cozy, close, familiar relationship developed between close persons - has negative meaning in this case), special "understanding" and garbage thrown on the street; it is in direct relations with the attempts of spoiling National Independence Day and the fear of letting children out in the conditions of criminal. If you don't want statehood and you deny the major values in the conditions of democracy - among them good order it is followed by - garbage on the streets, fear of going out in the evening time, corrupted custom officers, corrupted police officers, corrupted passport offices, much complicated living conditions and making career by networking, friendship, nepotism and bribes - like it happens in 90 percent of countries around the world. In this case we will become very much alike those countries where talent and hard work doesn't mean anything.
We left it all behind and all of us together, especially children over this fence must provide the future where such situation will never exist any more. Criminal and garbage must never return to our streets, living without electricity and corruption must never take place again, people of "cozy street mentality" from one street and district of the city must never return to these offices.
Struggling with us and our government (however I want to note that democracy and criticism is normal), was being held by one sigh only - they were asking return to jigruli (slang in Georgian meaning cozy, close, familiar relationship developed between close persons - has negative meaning in this case), criminal, corrupted living full of garbage. They called it restoration of their dignity. Their dignity is the greatest worthlessness in the world - this is the right of humiliating others. For them it is not essential that a person is more talented, or he invented something but which district is someone from or is a person someone's son or grandson and this is why he has a right to humiliate others. Maybe there is no electricity and he is the one who has a generator and others don't, just his entrance is swept and others live in garbage. He doesn't pay bribes, because he has some relatives and friends, but others must pay lot of money in order to get elementary service...
By the way I was telling a very important country leader recently that one can get customs clearance on the load in about 5-7 minutes, maximum in one hour, in other case a customs officer might loose his job. He laughed and said: where can you find such customs officer who will agree to work in such conditions? He meant that if a customs officer has no "left hand income" or a comfort to humiliate others - they will not work. I laughed back and said: we looked at such customs officers for seven years. I personally sent Sarpi customs officers home four or five times and later we decided not to employ customs officers, but employ girls from the modeling agency; these girls are born to smile to people. If an unshaved trailer driver crosses the border, a girl must welcome him in English or Turkish and let him go in 7 minutes. This is the specialness of Georgia. It doesn't happen anywhere in the world.
This is a technology - the will of state for the corruption not to exist, for not leaving the place for fat, unshaved and silly customs officers to humiliate others - no matter foreigner or our citizens. The more I travel, the more I see, the more I observe I understand that we are standing on right way and we overran many others around us. These skyscrapers surrounding us are built not because we have oil - we don't have oil, not because we have natural gas - we do not have natural gas, not because somebody's grandma left it to her grandchildren (my grandma was very rich, but no heritage was left after her, because the Communists took it all) - but because we created an incorrupt, transparent, effective state apparatus and developed democracy that serves people and not high officials.
This is why I want to carry out an act of people's democracy and hand electronic ID cards to several our citizens. I don't have this ID cards, because the President in this country is not number one citizen.
Number one are our citizens, our students, the representatives of various ethnicities, socially unsecured persons, our Georgians from foreign countries - so to say to whom our country belongs.
I want to underline that socially unsecured persons will be given new ID cards for free. Socially unsecured - it doesn't mean the profession or permanent status - it means temporary condition of a human that will change by all means.