Outgoing Georgia President Rallies Thousands before Vote

Some 12,000 supporters of outgoing President Mikheil Saakashvili's United National Movement (UNM) party rallied in the Georgian capital Tbilisi on Saturday in a show of strength ahead of presidential polls.

Saakashvili, who has to step down when his second and last term ends at the October 27 election, has been seen as a lame duck ever since his party lost to the Georgian Dream coalition headed by billionaire Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili at parliamentary polls last year.

To the accompaniment of a standing ovation from the flag-waving crowd, a defiant Saakashvili -- who was re-elected as UNM chairman -- pledged his party would return to power "sooner than they think".

UNM's presidential candidate David Bakradze, a former parliament speaker, is currently trailing his Georgian Dream rival Giorgi Margvelashvili by some distance in opinion polls.

Sweeping constitutional changes will come into effect when Georgia inaugurates its next president, shifting a raft of key powers from the chief executive to the prime minister.

The past year has seen an uneasy cohabitation between Saakashvili and Ivanishvili, with a slew of investigations launched into close Saakashvili allies in a move the UNM has described as a political witch-hunt.