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Georgian vote heralds watershed
The former Soviet republic of Georgia was embarking on a new era Tuesday after veteran President Eduard Shevardnadze, blamed by voters for falling living standards, lost ground in a parliamentary election to a new rising star and possible future president. With over half the votes from Sunday’s poll counted early Tuesday, Shevardnadze’s For a New Georgia bloc had the most support of any single party with 24.3 percent of the vote, but was set to be outnumbered in parliament by opposition parties who between them took over 70 percent of the vote. The result was a snub to Shevardnadze, the 75-year-old former Soviet foreign minister who has dominated politics in Georgia for nearly three decades and who is retiring when his current term ends in 2005. Harvard-educated opposition leader Mikhail Saakashvili, whose party came a close second in the interim results on 23.4 percent, is now well-positioned to stake his claim to the presidency in two years’ time. Saakashvili had formerly served as Shevardnadze’s justice minister but resigned last year after unsuccessfully trying to stamp out corruption among his fellow ministers and set up his own opposition party.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-11-05
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=20806