TBILISI, Jan 13: Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of the Georgian capital Sunday to denounce what they say was mass fraud in a presidential vote won by pro-Western reformer Mikheil Saakashvili.

At least 50,000 protested to demand a second round of voting -- the largest show of opposition force since a rally of about the same size kicked off weeks of political turmoil in early November.

“We must stand together and we will win. We will achieve a second round of elections,” opposition leader Levan Gachechiladze told the crowd assembled on a central square in the capital Tbilisi.

“Despite violence and injustice, we won. Georgia won,” Gachechiladze said.

Gachechiladze took 25.69 per cent of the vote, far behind Saakashvili's 53.47 per cent support in the Jan 5 vote, according to final results issued by the Central Election Commission earlier on Sunday.

The opposition has accused authorities of rigging the vote in favour of Saakashvili, who led the popular Rose Revolution in 2003 but whose support has waned because of continued high levels of poverty.

Salome Zurabishvili, another opposition leader and a former foreign minister, called on foreign leaders to boycott Saakashvili's inauguration ceremony and instead to “put pressure” on him.

The inauguration has tentatively been scheduled for Jan 20 or 21.

After rallying in the bitter cold for a few hours, protesters marched down Tbilisi's central Rustaveli Avenue to Freedom Square, where they dispersed peacefully. There was no sign of any police presence.

“The people have spoken and the authorities have refused to listen. We're here to protect our votes,” said Isolda Puriliani, 48, one of the protesters at Sunday's demonstration.

Opposition leaders vowed to hold more protests outside government offices in the coming days.

But the opposition's claims of vote-rigging have not been backed up by international observers, and some political analysts see the protest more as an opposition effort to consolidate its support ahead of spring parliamentary elections.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the main election monitoring group, said that despite some irregularities, the election had largely met democratic standards.

Protesters carried signs at Sunday's rally reading in English: “USA — Supporter of Dictatorship” and “OSCE backs the rigged elections.” The Central Election Commission said the courts were considering a number of complaints regarding the election, and that so far more than 33,000 votes had been declared invalid due to irregularities.

The presidential election was called a year early in response to violent clashes between riot police and anti-government protesters in November.

The unrest — and the subsequent imposition of nine days of emergency rule — dented Saakashvili's image as a leading democratic reformer in the ex-Soviet Union.

US-backed Saakashvili now has a new five-year mandate to pursue radical reforms to transform Georgia's economy. He is also wants Georgia, strategically bordered by Russia, Iran and Turkey, to join NATO and the European Union.

A flamboyant politician who speaks five languages, Saakashvili has won plaudits for pulling Georgia out of years of economic chaos and political instability.

But while the opposition backs his pro-western course, it accuses him of authoritarian tendencies and forgetting impoverished Georgians who have been left behind in free-market reforms.

Addressing the latter complaints, Saakashvili told reporters on Saturday that he aims to eliminate poverty.

He also said he hopes to improve relations with Russia, which is infuriated by Georgia's overtures to the West and its Nato ambitions.

Moscow has imposed wide-ranging economic sanctions on Georgia and supports armed rebels controlling the country's separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.—AFP