Mikheil Saakashvili wins Georgia's presidential election

Mikheil Saakashvili, who was secondly elected the President of Georgia made oath on the Georgian Constitution in front of the Georgian Parliament on today, pledged to calm troubled relations with Russia.

Mikheil Saakashvili (born December 21, 1967) was elected to replace President Eduard Shevardnadze, who stepped down in Georgia's 2003 bloodless Rose Revolution, led by Saakashvili and his major political allies, Burjanadze and Zurab Zhvania, and took office on 25 January 2004. Saakashvili resigned from his position on 25 November 2007 in order to re-run for the early Georgian presidential election, of 5 January 2008, and was reelected as President with the majority of votes according to official results.

On 5 January 2008, the presidential election was held nationwide with the exception of highland village Shatili, where the polling station was not opened due to the high levels of snowfall. The earliest exit polls, carried out by the group of non-governmental organisations and mass-media, suggested the victory of Mikheil Saakashvili with more than half of all the votes (52.5%), securing a full victory to Saakashvili, in turn, avoiding the need for the second run-off. Later results of archevnebi.ge showed Saakashvili had won with 53.5% whereas other source ukMSN stated Saakashvili had gathered 53.8% of all votes. The exit polls of all different sources reported Saakashvili's victory. Georgian opposition criticised the exit polls declaring they were biased towards the former president. The central election commission announced that Saakaashvili had won 53.4% of votes cast on Saturday, almost 2 times his opponent, 43-year-old wine producer Levan Gachechiladze, with 27%.According to Georgian Central Electoral Commission, as of 8 January 2007, which already included the votes from more polling stations than the earlier reports, Saakashvili was leading with 52.21%, Gachechiladze following him with only 25.26%.

Source: Wikipedia