Nationalist Leads in Soviet Republic : Georgia: The acting president is expected to win election and push for independence.

Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the fiery nationalist leader of the southern Soviet republic of Georgia, appeared to be well on his way to victory Sunday night in the republic’s first presidential election, despite opposition from five rivals.

With about 80% of the ballots tabulated, Gamsakhurdia appeared to have won from 70% to 90% of the vote across the mountainous southern republic, said Archil Chirakadze, chairman of Georgia’s Election Commission.

His support seemed strong in the cities, but his popularity in the countryside is less certain.

Gamsakhurdia, 52, gray-haired and with a trim mustache, looked confident as he stepped out of his armored black Mercedes-Benz on Sunday morning to vote at a Tbilisi school, which had been freshly painted for the occasion. Flanked by bodyguards, Gamsakhurdia pledged that the election would be fair despite charges by his opponents that he would rig the results.

Voters turned out in large numbers, taking advantage of the warm spring weather in Georgia; by midafternoon, 60% of the 3.5 million voters had cast ballots, election officials said.

Most of those questioned by journalists said they were voting for Gamsakhurdia, who led the pro-independence Round Table coalition of nationalist groups to victory in parliamentary elections and has been acting president for two months.

Even his chief rival and sharpest critic, Valerian Advadze, acknowledged on the eve of the election, “Very many people believe in him fanatically, and this faith makes them blind to the mistakes and blunders in his policies.”

The election is the first in 73 years of Soviet history to choose a republic president through a direct ballot, and it will be followed June 12 by a similar vote in the Russian Federation, the largest of the country’s 15 constituent republics, where the radical populist Boris N. Yeltsin is the leading candidate.

Gamsakhurdia, a longtime dissident and former political prisoner, declared that he would use the expected victory to press for Georgia’s independence from the Soviet Union. “My first step would be to win recognition for Georgia” as an independent state, he told a Sunday afternoon news conference in Tbilisi, the capital.

In a March plebiscite, more than 90% of those voting backed Georgia’s independence from the Soviet Union, and Gamsakhurdia is now seeking a meeting early next month with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev on terms for Georgia’s secession and its future relationship with the country.

But Gamsakhurdia is also certain to take the vote as approval of his strongly nationalist, anti-Communist policies within Georgia and his harsh actions against those he deems opponents of independence and of his leadership.

“I don’t trust a man who is capable of calling his opponents scum and enemies of the people,” Advadze, the leading rival, told foreign correspondents. “I don’t trust a person who says he is going to seek a reckoning with his opponents. Such a man is not capable of uniting the people.”

Gamsakhurdia had called Advadze, a 60-year-old economist and leader of the Union for National Concord and the Revival of Georgia, an agent of the KGB, the Soviet security police, and he warned voters that Advadze would deliver the republic back into the hands of Moscow.

Gamsakhurdia began his news conference Sunday by ordering from the room a correspondent for Radio Liberty, the U.S. radio station that broadcasts to the Soviet Union.

“Take this man away,” he said to an aide in Georgian, according to other correspondents who were present. He said the reporter, Gia Popkhadze, was a supporter of the opposition and was broadcasting “misinformation.”

“This man is a provocateur ,” he told the other journalists in English. “He belongs to the so-called opposition. . . . I don’t want his presence here. He deserves to be arrested, but now I just want him to go away.”

During the highly emotional campaign, Gamsakhurdia’s opponents had accused him of turning into a dictator, and he charged in return that they were all Kremlin agents.

Gamsakhurdia has indeed gained considerable power since being elected the head of Parliament last year, and the new executive presidency will give him additional legal authority and strengthen his influence in pushing through more radical changes in the republic.

During the campaign, however, he heatedly denied his opponents’ charges of dictatorial tendencies and declared his respect for the human rights of those loyal to the republic. “What dictator ever built his power on democratic elections?” he asked.

In his final campaign talk, he said a new system of local government that would extend his authority to the village level is vital as an interim measure to remove the last vestiges of communism.

Opposition candidates charged last week that the election was unfair because Gamsakhurdia and his ruling Round Table-Free Georgia movement controlled the republic’s news media and kept out opposing viewpoints.

“Apart from other presidential candidates’ political programs, which newspapers were obliged to publish, all the remaining space was fully devoted to articles in support of Gamsakhurdia,” the official Soviet news agency Tass reported from Tbilisi.

As the polls closed, Advadze predicted, “(This) morning, the repression will start against all of us who were against him.”

Gamsakhurdia will face a rebellion in six months if he continues his policies, Advadze said. “People are blind now,” he said. “What we need is a leader strong in the head, not in the hand.”