The ruling National Movement Party is the “the major force” within the country behind “democratization and modernization” of Georgia and Georgia “is a center of modernization on the entire post-Soviet space and in the broader region,” President Saakashvili said on September 30.
Speaking with senior members of his ruling party, Saakashvili said that “important part of modernization is democratization” and in this context he spoke of planned constitutional reform.
Draft of the constitutional amendments has been passed with the first reading last week. Under the new model most of the presidential powers from late 2013 will be transferred to PM; the President, however, would still retain some powers and remain elected by popular vote.
“We are moving to more complicated system, as the new system will be based on several power centers,” he said and added, that adoption of such a system right after the Rose Revolution would have amounted “to disaster.”
He said Georgia now had “more refined system”, which allowed the country to move to the new constitutional model.
He said that recommendations to further reduce next president’s powers and make it a mere ceremonial post were “unacceptable”.
“Advice is good, but no one will be able to build our country better than us and no one knows better than us what is good for our country,” Saakashvili said.
“Of course we should take into consideration all the positive experience of other countries, but also should take into consideration mistakes of other countries,” he said and brought situation in Moldova as an example of “mistake” that should not be repeated by Georgia.
Moldova will hold parliamentary elections - the third since April, 2009 - in November. Legislative body there failed to elect a new president as not a single party or coalition secured enough votes. In September Moldova held a referendum to make a presidential post directly elected, but the referendum was invalidated because of low voter turnout.
“They [Moldova] took into consideration all the international recommendations, but the government there is paralyzed for about a year already, because they are one vote short to form the government and eventually they had to dissolve the Parliament; that’s a classical example of sharing of international norms without taking into consideration local experience,” Saakashvili said.
“There have been recommendations to make the President like Queen of England – that is unacceptable for us; the country, whose 20% of territory is occupied and which faces serious challenges should have strong, effective head of state,” he said.