Opposition supporters hold party flags in the center of Georgia’s capital Tbilisi, Saturday.— APTBILISI — Tens of thousands of Georgians joined one of the biggest opposition rallies in the ex-Soviet state in years Saturday on the final day of campaigning before hard-fought parliamentary polls.

Huge crowds packed Tbilisi’s central Freedom Square and the capital’s main street to cheer billionaire tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose opposition Georgian Dream coalition is challenging President Mikheil Saakashvili’s ruling party in Monday’s vote, an AFP correspondent said.

His supporters marched on the square in large columns from several locations across the city, wearing his coalition’s T-shirts, carrying the bloc’s banners and flags and chanting “Georgia! Georgia!”

“Saakashvili’s system must be destroyed. The fate of the country is being decided at these elections,” Ivanishvili told the rally. “The day of a new government is coming,” he said.

Parliamentary delegations from the OSCE, the Council of Europe, NATO and the European Parliament in Tbilisi issued a joint pre-election statement calling on all sides to “exercise restraint, renounce violence and not respond to provocation”.

“Political leaders should be chosen through the ballot box and not on the streets,” the statement said.

Both Saakashvili’s United National Movement and the opposition Georgian Dream bloc have vowed to win the election after a campaign that was described by OSCE observers as “confrontational and rough”. — AFP