Georgia votes in ‘historic’ election showdown

GEORGIA: Georgia voted in “historic” parliamentary polls Monday as President Mikheil Saakashvili's party clashed with a billionaire tycoon in the strongest challenge to its rule since coming to power in 2003.

The struggle between Saakashvili's party and an opposition coalition led by billionaire tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili has turned increasingly bitter after a scandal over torture in prisons sparked protests across the ex-Soviet state.

“It is a day of historic importance for Georgia. The fate of the Georgian state is being decided,” Saakashvili, whose campaign was hurt by the prison abuse scandal, said after casting his ballot in Tbilisi.

The highly-polarised campaign in the country of 4.5 million people, described by OSCE election monitors as “confrontational and rough”, has raised fears of post-poll unrest.

Georgia's main backers, the US and the EU, have called for a fair vote and emphasised that democratic progress is crucial for the small Caucasus republic's ambitions to join Western institutions like NATO.

Turnout was 25.5 percent at 0800 GMT, four hours after polls opened, the Central Election Commission said.

“These elections are of colossal importance. The unjust rule of (Saakashvili’s) United National Movement must end,” one voter, engineer Nodar Khinsalishvili, told AFP at a polling station in Tbilisi.

AFP