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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, January 04, 2004

Georgia holds presidential election

Georgia's eligible voters began to go to the polling stations across the country on January 4 to choose a president from the six candidates.


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Georgia's eligible voters began to go to the polling stations across the country on January 4 to choose a president from the six candidates.

About 1.74 million of Georgia's approximately 2 million voters have already been registered to vote.

Under the current law, no fewer than half of Georgia's eligible voters must cast their ballots should the election be valid or a run-off should be held within two months.

A candidate should get at least 50 percent plus one vote to be elected as the president in the first round, or a second round of voting between the top two should be held two weeks after the first round and the candidate who wins a majority wins the election.

There are a total of 2,875 polling stations across Georgia and 26 polling stations in foreign countries, including four in Russia and Ukraine each.

The ballot began at 0800 a.m. (0400 GMT) and will close at 0800p.m.(1600 GMT)

Preliminary results of the presidential election is expected tobe announced on Monday, and the final official results are due within a week after the polling day.

Some 474 observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 90 from the Commonwealth of Independent States, as well as those from Georgia's non-governmental organizations are to monitor the election process.

Among the six presidential candidates, Mikhail Saakashvili is the favorite to win.

Saakashvili quit his post of justice minister in 2001 and led a protest that forced President Eduard Shevardnadze to resign. Recent opinion polls showed that about 68.1 percent of the respondents will vote for Saakashvili.

Saakashvili's rivals include three lawyers, a former regional governor and the head of an organization of the disabled. But in a ballot which focuses on such issues as high-level corruption, poverty, separatism and relations with western nations, they seem to have far worse chances to win.

Shevardnadze was forced to resign in December amid widespread protests over alleged vote rigging in the country's parliamentary elections. The nation's parliament speaker Nino Burjanadze took over from Shevardnadze as acting president until Jan 25.

With a population of 4,489,000, Georgia, situated in the western part of the Caucasus mountains, borders Russia in the north. A 2.7-billion-US-dollar pipeline, which is to take Caspianoil across Georgia's territory to Western markets, has increased the significance of the country on the geopolitical map.

Source: Xinhua


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