Questions, questions, questions! Hundreds of questions! Unanswered, incorrectly posed, not-yet-asked ones! Smart, up-to-the-point, reasonable ones! Thick, irrational, ludicrous ones! Questions all the way! Questions all the time! I am talking about the Georgian people’s questions who took active part in jettisoning the communist idea and in actual demolishing of the Soviet Union, the people who have many, many times in the last quarter of a century gone to the palls with a hope of change and with a prospect of improvement, the people who have tolerated serial mistakes of their governments, have endured the lies of various political parties, have gone through unfulfilled promises and unfounded projects, have tried to find answers to questions that have always been sharp and burning for them, questions like: Which way to go – north or west?
How to get back the lost territories? When do we accede to NATO? Why NATO? Shall we love or hate Russia? What does America mean to us? How rich or how poor are we? What belongs to whom in this country? How much of national property has been sold to foreigners? Does this matter in principle? What to do with the plummeting birthrates? How to handle hefty medical bills? What to expect from national education system? Can we survive independently as a nation? What is independence for Georgia? What do we need our independence for? Why is the retirement allowance so low? What kind of capitalism do we enjoy? What is our economic strategy? Why is the price on gas so high? Will it ever go down? Why has the unemployment skyrocketed? What is happening with our national heritage? Is it still valuable to us? Why are we dancing and singing that much? Is this simply our nature or the consequence of our current desperation? What about more than a million Georgians who have left this country forever? Will they ever come back? Will the emigration continue? Will ethnic Georgians be living on this territory after a century? Does this question mean anything to us? Is justice in place here? How about the law enforcement? Is it fair enough for a contemporary democratic country? Is democracy real and wholesome in Georgia? Can we say that we are one happy nation? If yes, why are so many people whining around? If yes, how long is the way that is left to go to acquire the sense of national happiness, consisting of little individual pieces of happiness? There are more questions to answer, many more! But most of them could probably be answered if this nation had in front of it an instructive national concept of development of various directions – ideological, economic, political, educational, medical, military, commercial, agricultural, industrial, cultural, etc. How can we, for instance, make a choice in terms of going west to Europe and America or north to Russia if we do not have at our disposal the most optimal concept of implementing the Georgian national politics, created by the best brains of this nation? How can we make our economy work if we do not use the national concept of developing that economy? How can we expect a satisfactory result from our educational system if we do not know exactly what to expect from our educational efforts, based on documental work, called national concept of education? These examples may go on and on and on. To cut it short, we have to be clear on every direction which makes the foundation of our future development – correct, optimal, constructive and functional. This is the only way to handle this nation right. I cannot put this simpler. I have no way to make it more comprehensible. I simply know that these questions may not be left without answers for too long.