Salome Zurabishvili addressed the nation on the New Year’s eve in a televised address, surrounded by the dismissed civil servants. She made unity the main theme of her address. President Zurabishvili spoke both of the moments of unity and of good that 2024 had brought, as well as the challenges and struggles the nation had faced.
2024 was a year of great unity, she said, recalling the achievement of EU candidate status at the very end of 2023 and the excitement that continued into early 2024. She also recalled the success of qualifying for Euro 2024 and Georgia’s participation and victories at the Olympic Games in the summer of 2024. We are and will remain united, she said.
She also spoke of the other side of 2024: “The year also brought other things: it was a year of the Russian [foreign agents] law and [other] Russian laws, of Russian methods, of Russian repressions against our people, against our soul and against our future. She noted: “That’s why we don’t know how 2024 will remain in our memory. But in spite of all this, we have come through it,” she said, adding, “I congratulate you together with these people, who are only a small part of the large group of civil servants who have been dismissed in recent days,” stressing that they were the ones who put freedom and love for their country above all else.
She then underlined the importance of civil servants, saying “there is no state without honorable and strong civil servants. These are the people who put freedom and dignity above everything else, who know that nothing is above the country and love for it.”
She noted that Georgia isn’t just its nature and people, but what has been achieved through a difficult struggle and has become a state.
Salome Zurabishvili said: “This is what we are protecting today, against Russians and against internal Russians.” She expressed confidence that “there will come a time when we will return to unity”, adding that “unity will save us, as it did centuries ago”. As a symbol and embodiment of this unity, she cited the giant “supra” feast table organized by protesters on Rustaveli Avenue on New Year’s Eve, along with the accompanying Georgian iconic folk song “mravalzhamier”.
She concluded by congratulating the nation on 2025 and expressed her confidence that “2025 will be a truly victorious year”.
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