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TBILISI, (News Agencies)-President Eduard Shevardnadze easily won a landslide re-election victory with a huge majority. Shevardnadze, who first gained international attention as Soviet Foreign Minister under Mikhail Gorbachev, has been criticized for failing to revive the Georgian economy, but had now promised to tackle the economic problems, widespread unemployment and poverty during his second five-year term. Earlier reports of alleged irregularities and vote rigging by the opposition have been rejected. Central Election Commission chief, Dzhumber Lominadze said Shevardnadze had won a second five-year term in Sunday's election even though the counting of returns was not likely to be completed until later this week. He insisted the vote had been fair despite concerns expressed by an international monitor. Election officials said with the 88 percent of the vote counted, Shevardnadze had 80.4 percent, and ex-Communist leader, Dzhumber Patiashvili trailed far behind with 16.6 percent. While four other candidates received small numbers of votes. Opposition leaders alleged there had been ballot stuffing by government officials and said they were considering a protest. Patiashvili acknowledged his defeat, but said the election had not been fair. "There were gross violations of law and voting rules, and it was impossible to win under such conditions," he said. Nugzar Ivanidze, head of the monitoring organization Fair Elections, said his observers had seen violations in some regions, but "at this stage, we do not have enough information to make conclusions." Georgian political analysts said most of the country's 5 million people saw little choice besides Shevardnadze, who has brought relative stability to the country since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. His victory margin was much larger than had been suggested by pre-election opinion polls, which showed him with approval ratings of about 50 percent. Experts said Shevardnadze's key political advantage over his competitors was his international prominence. His calls for closer ties to the West have helped bring foreign loans and world attention to the tiny, mountainous republic in the Caucasus.
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