TBILISI - Georgians elect a parliament on Monday with tension high after a prison abuse scandal that has turned the vote into the biggest test of President Mikheil Saakashvili's grip on the Caucasus Mountain nation in nearly a decade in power.
Saakashvili, a pro-Western leader who swept to the presidency after the bloodless Rose Revolution of 2003 and fought a five-day war with Russia in 2008, hopes to head off a challenge led by a once-reclusive tycoon with a fortune nearly half the size of the former Soviet republic's economy.
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