Georgia's new president vows to beat corruption
Georgian opposition leader Mikhail Saakashvili claimed victory in the country’s presidential elections and vowed to root out corruption after an exit poll showed him with an overwhelming lead.
Saakashvili, the favourite among the six candidates in yesterday’s ballot, was the driving force behind the peaceful demonstrations that brought down former President Eduard Shevardnadze in November in what became known as the “rose revolution”.
After the polls closed, Georgian independent television station Rustavi-2 said its exit survey indicated that Saakashvili had won 85.8% of the vote.
Preliminary results were expected today, but Saakashvili did not wait to claim victory. He waded into a crowd of cheering, flag-waving supporters at a concert hall in Tbilisi, embracing and kissing smiling well-wishers.
“We’ve got a very important mandate from our population to clean up the country, to consolidate power here, to make it official, to make it investment-friendly, to make it peaceful and prosperous,” he told a news conference.
Saakashvili, a 36-year-old US-educated lawyer, has pledged to take a hard line against corruption and to work to restore the country’s economy, which largely collapsed in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Georgia was also ripped by two wars with separatist regions in the 1990s, ransom kidnappings became widespread and relations with its giant neighbour Russia deteriorated.
Shevardnadze stepped down six weeks ago in the face of massive protests over parliamentary election fraud.
