Presidential candidate and former parliament speaker, Nino Burjanadze, said she’s confident of winning the October 27 election and a vote count result other than her victory will mean ballot-rigging.

“If election is free, Nino Burjanadze will become the president, I am sure about it; I am not speculating, I just know it,” she said in Rustavi 2 TV’s talk show on October 8. “If I am on third or second place, it will mean that elections are rigged, but we will not let them rig these elections.”

She dismissed as groundless speculation that she’s in a deal with the Georgian Dream with PM Ivanishvili providing tacit support to her campaign with a purpose to prevent UNM presidential candidate MP Davit Bakradze from taking second place in the race in order to deprive UNM its standing of major opposition force.
 
Burjanadze, who is campaigning actively throughout the country, accused UNM and Georgian Dream of colluding against her with a purpose of preventing her from winning the elections, alleging that UNM is ready to help GD’s candidate with votes if they see that Burjanadze is winning. “The National Movement knows that my victory would mean the end to the National Movement,” Burjanadze said.

“The fact that the National Movement… dared to hold a convention in the Sports Palace, threatening to return back into power sooner than we think, is first and foremost Georgian Dream’s fault. I promise that I and hundreds of thousands of my supporters will not let it happen,” she said.

Burjanadze said that GD's presidential candidate Giorgi Margvelashvili, who in the past was her advisor, “is a good, well-educated person”, but he won’t be able to properly perform presidential duties “in today’s Georgia” because “he has neither experience nor competence for that.”

Burjanadze also said that early parliamentary elections will be needed as the sitting parliament “does not reflect reality that exists now in the country.” She said that the sitting parliament will further “lose its legitimacy” after PM Ivanishvili’s intended pre-term resignation, because, she said, voters cast ballot in 2012 parliamentary elections not for those who are Georgian Dream members but personally for Bidzina Ivanishvili.