TBILISI, Nov 22: Georgia teetered on the brink of anarchy on Saturday after protesters proclaiming a “bloodless revolution” stormed the parliament during President Eduard Shevardnadze’s address, forcing the veteran leader to flee.

The protesters later stormed the presidential palace as well.

The president declared a state of emergency in a statement issued from his home where he took shelter after being driven out of the legislature. Special forces were protecting the president there.

“This is an attempt at a coup d’etat and an attempt to overthrow the president,” he told reporters in his garden.

“I cannot do it any other way now. I’m declaring a state of emergency. This is a special order and the defence ministry as well as the interior ministry will be involved in it. And we will restore order.”

Eduard Shevardnadze, 75, had been addressing the inaugural session of parliament elected in a Nov 2 election denounced by the opposition as rigged.

“This is a parliament. We are not in the street. Let all Georgia see what is happening,” Mr Shevardnadze said amid chaotic scenes before his bodyguards hustled him away. Fistfights broke out for a time between his supporters and opposition.

In scenes reminiscent of the “people power” protests in eastern Europe in the 1990s, tens of thousands of Georgians demanding Mr Shevardnadze quit power took to the streets of the capital Tbilisi while troops stood aside.

Troops and police, who had earlier blocked roads around parliament and President Shevardnadze’s nearby offices in the centre of Tbilisi, let the protesters through without resistance.

A pro-presidential rally vanished as soon as the opposition took the parliament. Most of the pro-Shevardnadze supporters had been brought by bus or train from the Black Sea Adzhara region, whose hardline leader, Aslan Abashidze, has made a loose alliance with Mr Shevardnadze.

The president had been uncompromising in his stance, refusing to be pushed from office by the demonstrators.

Technically, Georgia’s communist party boss and leader for nearly all the post-Soviet period has another 18 months in office.

As the country plunged deeper into crisis, the main opposition leader said the president could stay in office temporarily if it was only to usher in an early presidential election.

“We won’t accept anything short of (early presidential elections). If he announces for himself some transitional period for new presidential elections, that’s fine. If he wants to call (them), we can still negotiate on that,” Mikhail Saakashvili told CNN television.

The parliament’s chairman, Nino Burdzhanadze, later declared that she was taking on the functions of the president until the crisis was resolved.

Ms Burdzhanadze told reporters: “I, as chairman of the Georgian parliament, in accordance with the constitution, will take on the functions of the president until such time as it becomes clear whether he has the ability to continue.”—Reuters