From former president to business tycoon in exile, candidates who will contest in Georgia's early presidential election on Saturday are wooing voters in the run-up to the race for the top job in the Caucasus nation.
Billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili, the richest Georgian who is accused of bribery and is living in Britain, said on Thursday he would not withdraw from the race, taking back last week's claim to give up.
"I had a phone conversation with His Holiness Patriarch Ilia II...This conversation has given me the power to declare that I will not withdraw my candidacy and will continue to fight on to be elected president," Georgia's Prime News cited him as saying.
Opposition parties, which strived to ouster then President Mikhail Saakashvili by street protest in November and gained relatively low support ratings in recent polls, were split in their response to Patarkatsishvili's announcement.
"Patarkatsishvili's participation in elections will change nothing," said Tina Khidasheli, spokeswoman for the Republican Party, one of the nine parties that form the opposition coalition. But presidential candidate Shalva Natelashvili said Saakashvili would have one more competitor.
Most polls showed Saakashvili, who called the snap vote following clashes between police and protestors in November and resigned to run in the race, had a 40-odd percent support rate thanks to an economy that has recorded double-digit growth since he swept to power in 2004.
Saakashvili's campaign advertisements are frequently broadcasted on television and posters can be seen on the main Shotarustaveli Avenue in the capital city that sits in a valley of rocky snow mountains.
He paid a visit on Thursday to a maternity hospital and handed over vouchers and some 625 U.S. dollars aids to mothers of newborns in a bid to gain support from those who felt left behind the economic growth, local media reported.
The U.S.-educated former president, 40, however, has to win 50 percent plus one vote to secure victory. Otherwise, the top two candidates will take a run-off poll two weeks after the first round.
Some 55 to 65 percent of the country's 3.3 million eligible voters are expected to cast ballots in some 3,400 polling stations nationwide and abroad, said Central Election Commission Chairman Levan Tarkhnishvili.
Source:Xinhua
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