Opposition in Georgia names its candidate

GEORGIA:Georgia's opposition has named a wealthy winemaker to run against President Mikhail Saakashvili in January's snap election, amid signs that its much-vaunted unity is already under severe strain.

Levan Gachechiladze was chosen to take on Mr Saakashvili in a ballot that the president called after the 10-party opposition brought up to 70,000 people on to the streets of the capital, Tbilisi, to demand elections and an end to pervasive poverty and corruption.

"It won't be an ordinary election," Mr Gachechiladze vowed. "It will be against violence, it will be against injustice and it will be against the institution of the presidency." The opposition wants to scrap the powerful presidency and make Georgia a full parliamentary democracy. It also wants Mr Saakashvili to lift a current state of emergency to allow rallies and free media coverage of the campaign.

Salome Zurabishvili - who was born in Paris and served as France's ambassador to Tbilisi before becoming Georgia's foreign minister after the 2003 Rose Revolution swept Mr Saakashvili into power - was named as the opposition's candidate for prime minister.

"Levan is a good candidate, a businessman very well known by the public and very popular, who everyone knows has absolutely no presidential ambitions," Ms Zurabishvili said. "We have real chances on the condition that the climate of political repression is lifted."

But the fractious opposition movement's semblance of unity was immediately shattered by the influential Labour party's announcement that it might nominate its own presidential candidate.

"Today's statement from the Labour party means it has split from the coalition," said Koba Davitashvili, one of the opposition leaders.

A billionaire who had pledged to fund the opposition has also sown discord and some confusion by announcing his own bid for the presidency.

Badri Patarkatsishvili, a long-time business associate of exiled Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky, sold a large stake in his media operations to Rupert Murdoch last month, and is now abroad after being named as a suspect in an alleged coup plot against the president.

"If you're very rich and own a television channel you can do an awful lot," said Alexander Rondeli, head of the Georgian Foundation for International and Strategic Studies. "Patarkatsishvili has a chance and will be a threat."

Other analysts said his popularity was too low, his political experience too meagre and his business reputation too murky to attract much support.