According to BBC, Georgia's governing party and the opposition have both claimed victory in the country's parliamentary elections.

Early results suggest the opposition Georgian Dream coalition, led by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, had a clear lead in votes for party lists.

But President Mikheil Saakashvili said his ruling party was ahead in the race for seats decided on a first-past-the-post basis - nearly half the total.
It is seen as his biggest popularity test since he came to power in 2003. It is not yet clear when official results from Monday's vote will be announced.

Georgia's Central Electoral Commission (CEC) said there had been no grave violations during the voting. Observers from the European security organization OSCE are due to give their verdict at 14:30 (10:30 GMT).

According to the CEC's early results, the rival blocs are running neck-and-neck in the 73 first-past-the-post constituencies. The other 77 out of 150 parliamentary seats in total are decided by the proportional, party list method.

With 21% of the party list vote counted, Georgian Dream had secured 54%, while Mr Saakashvili's United National Movement (UNM) had 41%.
The Boston Globe also dedicated a report to the Georgian parliamentary elections. According to the article, Exit polls in Georgia's hotly contested parliamentary election Monday suggested that a new party headed by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili had managed to edge the party of Georgia's larger-than-life president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

Poll results released by the Georgian government indicated that Ivanishvili's party, Georgian Dream, had probably received more than half of the total popular vote in the election. It was a sobering result for Saakashvili and his ruling team, who took power in the peaceful Rose Revolution nine years ago.

Saakashvili's party may still retain a majority in the 150-seat Parliament because about half of the seats are elected in individual races by district rather than by national proportional representation. Recent constitutional changes will shift many of the president's current powers to the Parliament starting next year.

As president, Saakashvili has remade Georgia as a bastion of resistance to Russian influence and a laboratory for free-market economic policy.

He faced no formidable challenge until last year, with the emergence of Ivanishvili, a reclusive philanthropist who has spent years spreading his Russian-earned billions around Georgia's countryside.

Ivanishvili has tapped into long-simmering grievances over poverty and the heavy-handed ruling style of Saakashvili and his team.

On Monday the country seemed to be heading for a reckoning, with each side expressing complete confidence that it would win. With voting still in progress, Ivanishvili had already declared victory, telling reporters that Georgian Dream will win ‘‘no less than two-thirds of seats in the Parliament.''