READ: PM Irakli Garibashvili’s address on Georgian Independence Day

Tbilisi: The Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Garibashvili, addressed the citizens on the event of Georgian Independence Day. 

 As he congratulated citizens on Georgian Independence Day, Irakli Garibashvili stated, “On May 26, 1918, Georgians said firmly and loudly, for the whole world to hear, that we want to again “stand as a nation among each other”.The first independence may be short-term but proved to be fundamental for our future development.

In this short time, the Georgian people and their government created the foundations of a democratic European state based on Western values, whose spirit and constitution were highly progressive even by today’s criteria of Europe.

Finally restored, national independence and statehood in 1991 were founded on the same constitution and its values; the building of a European state was defined as the main course of our country. 

With this, in our time, we have renewed the movement towards the highest goal of all generations – each citizen, all Georgian people, and Georgia’s freedom.

By gaining independence, dear friends, we have started building a free country. However, the road from independence to freedom is still to be passed.

 Independence means liberation from others, and freedom, as the great Ilia Chavchavadze taught us, means embracing ourselves; it means finding our own national, unique, self-sufficient path; freedom means a sovereign state, which executes domestic and foreign policy only in the interests of its own people, means such a state.

 And it is guaranteed that every citizen’s political and Social rights mean the rule of law, protection of eternal values and national interests, and freedom, which means an environment where the strength of each family is the primary task of the government.

At the same time, the basis of the strength of the state; freedom means a society that strives not only territorial but also values and content unity, where each other “meets our past, present and future.”