President Eduard Shevardnadze is said to be heading for a second term as Georgia president, with about sixty per cent of the vote in today's poll. Some 2,600 polling stations opened early this morning across Georgia, a small Caucasus nation of 5.5 million.
Voting follows a mostly quiet pre-election campaign and many voters said that they would not take part at all, disenchanted over what they say is lack of choice among candidates and continued economic hardship. One of the incumbent president's main challengers, regional boss Aslan Abashidze, pulled out of the race at the last moment yesterday, saying that the contest would not be free and democratic. Mr Shevardnadze, the one-time Soviet leader of Georgia from 1972 to 1985 and Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika-era foreign minister, won the country's last presidential race in 1995 with 74 percent of the vote.
