From the Associated Press

Thursday May 22, 2008  12:01 am

By MISHA DZHINDZHIKHASHVILI

Associated Press Writer

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) - An exit poll said President Mikhail Saakashvili's ruling party held a strong majority in Georgia's parliamentary elections Wednesday, a result his opponents immediately challenged.

A dispute over results could set the stage for another round of political squabbling that has spilled into Tbilisi's streets repeatedly over the past year, but a late-night opposition rally fizzled.

The election was seen as a test of the pro-Western leader's commitment to democracy, crucial to his aim of bringing the former Soviet republic into NATO.

The exit poll gave Saakashvili's United National Movement more than 63 percent of the nationwide vote by party list. It put the United Opposition a distant second, with about 14 percent, and indicated two other opposition parties would clear the 5 percent threshold needed to win seats.

The party list voting will fill half the 150 seats in Parliament. In the district races whose winners will fill the other 75 seats, the poll predicted Saakashvili's party would win more than 53 percent of the vote, with the United Opposition trailing at nearly 16 percent.

Saakashvili's opponents rejected the poll numbers, accused the government of widespread violations and vowed to challenge the official results.

``We are fighting for each vote,'' Levan Gachechiladze, a top leader of the United Opposition bloc, told some 2,000 supporters gathered after midnight near the Central Election Commission headquarters.

He said opposition leaders would huddle to plot strategy, continue their own vote count and await official results, which the commission said it would begin announcing Thursday.

``We have hard days ahead, but we must win because the truth is on our side,'' Gachechiladze told the crowd before he and other leaders called on supporters to disperse.

Opposition leaders, who were unable to keep up the momentum of protests claiming fraud following Saakashvili's re-election in January, had been hoping for a much larger crowd.

United Opposition co-leader David Gamkrelidze alleged widespread cheating and pressure on opponents by authorities in areas outside Tbilisi.

``There was total falsification, especially in the regions,'' he said by telephone. ``According to our data, the picture is totally different.''

Opposition leaders released their own partial results, which they said were based on data from polling precincts. They showed the numbers on a big screen at the rally, where activists handed out white masks bearing the slogan ``You can't falsify any more'' in curly Georgian lettering.

They claimed that in Tbilisi, the United Opposition was ahead with more than 40 percent of the vote, to 32 percent for the United National Movement.

But Saakashvili's party was confident of its win.

``It is certainly only preliminary information, but the gap is so great that it is unlikely that the situation is going to change fundamentally,'' said David Bakradze, a former foreign minister for Saakashvili who is expected to be his party's candidate for Parliament speaker.

The United States and European Union have hoped the election would restore the U.S.-allied leader's reputation for democracy after a violent crackdown on opposition protesters last fall.

Saakashvili also was under pressure to improve on January's presidential election. Although international observers said the overall balloting was in line with democratic standards, they pointed to an array of violations and urged Georgia to do better in the parliamentary election.

The vote was colored by tension over Russia's growing support for breakaway Abkhazia province, where gunfire broke out Wednesday along the border with Georgian-controlled territory.

Abkhazian forces fired on two buses carrying Georgian residents from Abkhazia's Gali district who had crossed into Georgian-controlled territory to vote, and several people were wounded, Georgian Interior Ministry official Shota Utiashvili said.

In Moscow, Col. Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for some of the Russian infantry forces serving as peacekeepers in Abkhazia, said automatic weapons fire and grenade explosions had been reported.

Hostility between Georgia and Abkhazia has escalated in recent weeks, with each side accusing the other of preparing for military action. Russia, which has long supported Abkhazia, has bolstered its peacekeeping forces in the region.

The opposition parties share Saakashvili's wariness of Russia and his pro-Western views, so the heightened tension over Abkhazia has been more a platform for scoring points than for major policy debate.

His opponents accuse him of sacrificing democracy and human rights for the sake of holding on to power.

Saakashvili was elected by a landslide after leading the Rose Revolution in 2003, a mass protest over allegations of widespread fraud in an election for Parliament, but his popularity has faded amid persistent poverty and accusations of authoritarianism.

(This version CORRECTS UPDATES with opposition rally ending, quotes; corrects Gamkrelidze's first name to David sted Georgy.)