"I want him gone," said Tamara, 21, a student who joined a march down the central Rustaveli Prospect on Wednesday.
"I pay US$500 a year to learn history, but have no prospects of a job. Shevardnadze has been president for 12 years and done nothing," she said.
Manana Inozaridze, a chemist, 44, was sick of a culture where you have to bribe someone to get a job.
The demonstrators are enduring rain, hunger and cold for what they insist is "peaceful protest." It will not last forever.
A senior presidential source said: "The government does not want to use force, but there have been calls for protesters to overrun the [president's offices], the state chancellery, and strangle people," he claimed.
"There is information that some protesters are armed and we have discovered a large arms depot. If you want democracy, you have to acknowledge the supremacy of the law," he said.
Wednesday night opposition leaders said they were ready for last-ditch talks, as some protesters kept up a hunger strike. But most analysts say a peaceful end is unlikely. Shevardnadze has often met opposition leaders, without success. One set of talks collapsed when Saakashvili "insulted" him, a government official said.
"He [Saakashvili] told him [Shevardnadze] he was like Ceaucescu [the late Romanian dictator] and would go the same way as him," the official said.
Wednesday night Saakashvili left a meeting with the former defense minister, an ally of Shevardnadze, saying the president was still not willing to compromise over the disputed election results.
The comparisons with Nicolae Ceaucescu epitomize how much the man who helped to end the cold war has changed. Rumors abound of his exorbitant wealth, despite the country's poverty. His spokesman admits that the elections had abnormalities, but says they were Georgia's best yet.
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