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| - Tens of thousands of opposition supporters rallied Friday in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, vowing to oust from power the increasingly unpopular ruling party in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Georgia on Saturday holds tightly contested parliamentary polls pitting an unlikely union of opposition groups against the ruling Georgia Dream party led by the country's richest man and former prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili. On Friday evening, supporters of the exiled ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili and his United National Movement party filled Tbilisi's central Freedom Square dominated by a giant statue of Saint George, the country's patron saint. Saakashvili addressed the cheering crowd via a video link from Ukraine where he serves as the head of a government taskforce on political and economic reforms. "Our victory is approaching. Georgia has awakened and is ready to choose freedom over oppression, prosperity over poverty, progress over backwardness," he said in the address. The charismatic reformer was forced to flee Georgia at the end of his second term in 2013, fearing arrest after prosecutors accused him of abusing power -- charges he has denied and said were politically motivated. "Ivanishvili is destroying Georgian democracy," one of the demonstrators, 59-year-old schoolteacher Natela Okropiridze, told AFP. "His one-man rule is approaching its end. On Saturday we will get rid of him." Another demonstrator, 20-year-old student Luca Shonia, said" "Georgia needs to be saved from this insatiable Ivanishvili." "The economy is in tatters, there are no opportunities for young professionals in the country." Georgian Dream has seen its popularity plummet due to widespread discontent over its failure to address economic stagnation and perceived backsliding on its commitment to democracy. Critics accuse Ivanishvili -- who is widely seen to be calling the shots in Georgia -- of persecuting political opponents and creating a corrupt system where private interests preside over politics. Western capitals have accused the Georgian Dream-led government of mounting a political witch-hunt and Interpol has recently turned down requests from Tbilisi to issue a red notice against Saakashvili. In an unprecedented show of unity, nearly all of Georgia's opposition parties, including Saakashvili's UNM -- the country's main opposition force, -- held talks on forming a coalition government if they are elected. Both the ruling party and the opposition have said they are sure to win, but analysts believe the outcome is uncertain, with the opposition holding only a narrow lead. Mountainous Georgia on the Black Sea is seen as a rare example of a democracy among ex-Soviet countries. But elections in the country of nearly four million people regularly spark mass protests, with only one orderly transition of power in a parliamentary vote in 2012. im/jbr
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