Tbilisi: The President of Georgia, Salome Zourabichvili has extended her support towards the protesters who have been protesting against the Foreign Agents Law, as she expressed her intentions to repeal the law. President Zourabichvili stated:
I am addressing you, those of you who are standing at Rustaveli Avenue this evening, just like I was standing there myself multiple times. I am standing here in New York City, and behind me is the Statue of Liberty. This is a symbol that Georgia has always fought for, for which we have come thus far. I stand beside you because today, you represent a free Georgia! Georgia sees its future in Europe, and that will not allow anyone to deprive of this future.
This future belongs to our young generations, to all of you! This is a future that was moulded by our ancestors and that is being moulded today. That is why nobody has the right to deprive you of your future.
Nobody has the right to set traps. This Foreign Agents law that nobody needs and that has been initiated out of nowhere, if not from some directives from Moscow, has to be voided in any form, it shouldn’t be sent to the Venice Commission. The Venice Commission knows well what type of law this is. I stated from day one that I would veto this law and I will veto it! I do not care for the review of its every single clause.
I do not care for its comparisons with some old American law, which we know all too well that it serves another purpose. I only care for the future of Georgia.
I’m only interested in this constitution that I’m the guarantor of. And this very constitution reads that all institutions and myself in the first place, but also the government and the authorities, have to do everything to lead this country into Europe, to secure our path of Euro integration.
And today, everyone who supports this law, everyone who has voted in favor of this law – everyone is in violation of this Constitution. All of them are distancing us from Europe.
I address our Ambassadors abroad, those that represent Georgia in European countries or here in the US. What is it that you are defending or representing if not the European future?!
All of us – the youth in Tbilisi now, me whether conducting negotiations here or speaking from the UN podium – say, we don’t want this law, which has no meaning but one – to distance us from Europe.
Today, we stand together! We’ll stand together tomorrow and lead our country into Europe. I make this promise to you as I have made the same promise to myself a long time ago.
