GABORONE (AFP) - Queues of voters in diamond-rich Botswana waited patiently to cast their ballots in elections that are expected to hand victory to the party in power since independence in 1966 in one of Africa's most stable countries.
President Festus Mogae's Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) is set to win a majority of seats in the elections for 57 members of parliament, the ninth multi-party polls to be held in the southern African country.
Turnout was strong during the vote held under a blazing sun, with many voters queueing at polling stations about an hour and a half before opening to get their turn, polling officers and observers said.
"It appears that that the elections ran smoothly," said the secretary general of the Independent Election Commission, Gabriel Seelesto, adding that "most" polling stations had closed at the scheduled time of 7:00 pm (1700 GMT).
Mogae, an Oxford-trained economist who has taken a leading role in the fight against AIDS, turned up with his wife Barbara to vote at a school in central Gaborone, telling reporters that he expected people in Botswana to "return us to power."
"The BDP is going to have an overwhelming majority," Mogae's predecessor, former president Ketumile Masire, said earlier after he cast his ballot.
"The party has performed so well. The issues are so basic. If there is a party who addresses these issues, it is difficult to see why you should try another party," he said.
A poor agriculture-based nation at independence, Botswana has become a middle-income country since the 1967 discovery of diamonds that has kept the economy sparkling as the world's leading producer of the raw stones.
The southern African country of 1.7 million people is also struggling with the world's second highest AIDS infection rate after Swaziland, at 37.3 percent, according to the UN AIDS agency.
The outcome of the vote will be watched closely for possible gains by opposition parties that could provide a fresh incentive for them to unite and try to push the BDP out of office in the 2009 elections.
The opposition has campaigned on a platform of fighting poverty and unemployment but it has remained weak and fractured despite an electoral pact between the biggest party, the Botswana National Front (BNF), and two other small parties.
The BNF-led pact is itself facing competition for opposition votes from the Botswana Congress Party, which split from the BNF in 1998.
"I think there will be a lot of sobering within the opposition parties" after these elections, said 38-year-old lawyer Dick Bayford, who leads the latest splinter group, the New Democratic Party, at a polling station in a Gaborone township.
In a poor Gaborone district, insurance company employee Ditebogo, 24, said he was supporting the opposition because the party in power had become smug.
"They know they are always winning so they are always relaxed and they don't do any work," he said.
Mogae, 65, has pledged continuity in the runup to the polls, telling supporters at rallies that his party had brought prosperity and uninterrupted civilian rule to Botswana since independence from British rule 38 years ago.
Botswana's third president has however made clear that he will not serve a full five-year term and plans to hand over the presidency in 2008 -- a year before the next elections -- to his vice-president Ian Khama, son of Botswana's founding president Seretse Khama.
A total of 552,890 voters were registered to cast ballots in the elections.
Ballot counting was to start later in the evening with results expected to be announced on Sunday.
The leader of the party that wins a majority of seats in parliament will be proclaimed president by the chief justice.
10/30/2004 - 20:55 GMT - AFP