Georgians Votes in Election after Ex-President's Arrest

The Georgians are voting during the municipal election in the whole of the country, which they see as a test for the strength of the ruling party.

Voting Saturday was one day after the detention of Mikheil Saakashvili, the exiled president, who returned to the country in order to seek to strengthen support from the opposition despite the imprisonment on convictions of violence in the power declared on his leave of Georgia.

In view of the election in which the ruling Georgian Dream Party and the United National Movement, founded by Saakashvili, the opinion polls showed over half the electorate of the former soviet republic were indecisive.

Strong opposition performance could raise tensions if Georgians expect early domestic elections.

In the spring, Georgian Dream signed an EU agreement to hold early parliamentary elections if the party receives less than 43 percent of the vote in municipal elections. Later on, it withdrew because it hadn't been signed by the UNM, although this party was signed after Georgian Dream had withdrawn.

Saakashvil was arrested hours after posting videos on Facebook stating that he had returned to the country, and left Georgia in 2014 to become a Ukrainian citizen.

It has been sentenced to up to six years in absentia and is faced with several other court cases arising from its 2004-13 office in relation to the violent dispersal of a demonstration and a raid by a political rival on a TV station.

President Salome Zurabishvili has told Friday that she will not consider offering him forgiveness, a former ally who was the first foreign minister for Saakashvili.