29 Dec, 2021
Greetings Mr. Chairman, members of Parliament. Greetings to every citizen of our country.
First of all, I would like to thank the parliamentary majority for nominating me for the post of Parliament Chairman, and for the declared confidence. This is the greatest honor and responsibility before the public and our political team. Correspondingly, I will do my best to serve our country and people with dignity.
Many thanks to Kakha Kuchava, who led the Parliament with dignity during a politically difficult time and was able to consolidate parliamentary life.
This year has been one of the most difficult years for our country since independence. The public simultaneously faced occupation, the pandemic, economic challenges, and imposed polarization.
Despite these difficult challenges, under our team’s leadership:
We kept the peace without retreating
We overcame several serious waves of the pandemic
We restored the country’s economy to pre-pandemic levels
We created a solid foundation for the political stability of the country by conducting the local self-government elections appropriately
Our doctors, our policemen, our soldiers, and our teachers were the allies of the Georgian people and authorities in dealing with all these challenges. Many thanks to them and to all the people who stood by the state during this difficult time.
The Parliament is the institution in which the power of the people – the source of governmental authority – is expressed to the greatest extent. That is why, as chairman of Parliament, I will stand guard over parliamentary sovereignty.
Of course, I am a member of the Georgian Dream team, and thus, I exercise the will of the majority of the people of Georgia. However, as chairman of Parliament, I will be the guarantor of the involvement and participation of the opposition elected by the people. Moreover, despite the existing confrontation, we have a good experience of cooperating with the opposition in this Parliament, which is related to a successful electoral reform.
Against this backdrop, the boycott of parliamentary activities by a part of the opposition is particularly disappointing, especially given that the Parliament of Georgia has taken a central place in Georgian politics as a result of the reform of the Constitution and the Rules of Procedure of the Parliament carried out by our team. With the new democratic standards, the multi-party Parliament has robust levers to oversee the executive branch of government. The role of the parliamentary opposition has increased in an unprecedented manner. All this creates special conditions for businesslike parliamentary discussion.
Integration into NATO and the European Union is our main foreign policy priority. As you are aware, our political team has an ambitious goal to apply for EU membership in 2024. Precisely for this reason, over the next three years we are facing an agenda laden with legislative reforms, which should play a pivotal role in our country’s legislative and institutional rapprochement with the European Union and bring the country’s democratic development to a new level.
Our national objective is to unite the country and the bring back our Abkhazian and Ossetian sisters and brothers. And this Parliament will be complete only when the elected representatives from Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali Region will sit in this hall together with us. This is the goal that must unite each and every one of us.
We have a distinguished country with dignified people, a unique history, a rich culture, and the church that stands guard over spirituality. This country and these people deserve unity, prosperity, progress, and development. And that is precisely why it is our special duty to dedicate our thoughts and deeds to this goal.
This will be my main objective as the chairman of Parliament.
May God be our protector!