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HARARE: Zimbabweans began voting on Saturday in an election which could bring an end to President Robert Mugabe's 28-year rule as his country buckles under the weight of the world's highest inflation rate.
Polling booths opened at 7:00am (0500 GMT) and the 5.9 million electorate have 12 hours in which to cast their ballots in a three-way presidential battle seen by analysts as the biggest challenge to face Mugabe since he took office.
The 84-year-old, Africa's oldest leader, is being challenged for the presidency by his former finance minister Simba Makoni and Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party.
Apart from a president, some 5.9 million eligible voters in this former British colony are choosing 210 members of parliament, 60 senators and 1,958 local government councillors.
The polls in Zimbabwe, a landlocked southern African country of 13 million people, are the culmination of a bruising but largely peaceful nine-week campaign.
The election takes place as Zimbabwe is grappling with the impact of the world's highest rate of inflation -- officially put at 100,580.2 per cent -- and an unemployment level which has breached the 80 per cent mark.
Once seen as the region's breadbasket, the country is now suffering from previously unheard of shortages of even the most basic foodstuffs such as cooking oil and bread.
Large queues had built up outside polling booths by the time they opened, with around 300 voters ready to cast their ballots at the Courteney Selous school in the upmarket Greendale suburb of eastern Harare where Makoni was due to vote.
Mathias Chimutsi said he had arrived more than three hours before the polling station opened and intended to vote for Tsvangirai.
"I've been here since five to three this morning," said Chimutsi. "I am here to vote because my belly is empty. I am hoping that things will improve in the country."
Critics blame the strongman Mugabe, who at 84 years is already Africa's oldest leader, for the country's woes.
But Mugabe, who has ruled the ex-British colony since independence in 1980, has blamed the economic chaos on the West which imposed sanctions intended to only hit his inner circle after he allegedly rigged his 2002 re-election.
His government has kept Western poll watchers at bay, while inviting observers from sympathetic countries and organisations, mainly African and Asian.
The country's army and police were placed on full alert Friday on the eve of the country's general election as security chiefs vowed to thwart any Kenya-style violence in the poll's aftermath.
The opposition has accused Mugabe of planning to fix the vote by doctoring of the voters' roll and creating bogus polling stations.
But the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, the body overseeing the polls, has dismissed the allegations that the roll was stuffed with phantom voters, saying the register may not be perfect but is credible.
To avoid a run-off a presidential candidate has to garner at least 51 per cent of the votes, and experts predict a second round given the tightness of the race.
In all there are four presidential candidates, 774 parliamentary hopefuls, 197 senator aspirants and 3,431 candidates vying to run local government.
Early preliminary results were expected to start trickling in hours after voting ends, but electoral officials could not state when final results would be declared.
Counting of votes will be at the polling stations and results immediately posted there and conveyed to a national coordinating centre. - AFP/ac
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