Giorgi Targamadze, leader of the Christian-Democratic Movement (CDM), announced on Friday about intention to run for president in the October 27 election.

Targamadze said that he’s expecting presidential elections to go into a runoff as none of the candidates will be able to win an outright victory in the first round on October 27.

“We have a great hope that Georgian people’s major value, Christian democracy, together with my team and my candidacy will become one of the main motives for the representative of Georgian Christian Democrats to be in the second round of election,” Targamadze said.

CDM, which was established in 2008 and represented parliamentary minority group in the previous parliament, failed in the October 2012 parliamentary elections to clear 5% threshold required for endorsing members to the legislative body and garnered only 2.04% of votes

Other candidates who have so far confirmed their intention to run in the October presidential election are Georgian Dream coalition’s Giorgi Margvelashvili, who is the Education Minister; Nino Burjanadze, leader of the Democratic Movement-United Georgia party; leader of Labor Party Shalva Natelashvili and former Labor Party member Nestan Kirtadze.

President Saakashvili’s UNM party is now in the process of selecting its presidential candidate through internal party elections, which is held in six stages involving regional conferences and debates between primary candidates; after two regional conferences former parliament speaker and now leader of UNM parliamentary minority group Davit Bakradze is leading in the primaries. 

The deadline for submitting applications to the Central Election Commission for being registered as a presidential candidate expires on September 7.