By Bashi Letsididi
GABORONE
Polls opened Friday in Botswana's general elections that will determine the next president of the landlocked southern African country.
Voting started at 6:30a.m. (0430 GMT) in some 2,606 polling stations and will close at 6:00p.m. (4:00 GMT).
At a press briefing held three hours into the voting, Election Commission spokesperson Oarabile Maroba said that process was going smoothly.
Maroba said that a few polling stations opened late but are now fully operational.
"Other than that, everything is going well and we don't expect anything that will compromise the credibility of the outcome of this election," he said.
Around 823,000 of the country's 1.12 million eligible voters have registered to cast ballots in the polls.
The election is seen as a litmus test for the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), which has ruled the country since it achieved independence in 1966.
Three main parties – the BDP, the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) and the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) – are contesting 57 parliamentary seats and 489 council seats.
Under Botswana's first-past-the-pole system, incumbent President Ian Khama, the BDP leader, UDC leader Duma Boko and BCP's Dumelang Saleshando will all vie for the presidency.
Early election results are expected on Sunday, with the BDP tipped to win the hotly-contested race.
A poll by the Afrobarometer, a South African-based research project that measures political atmosphere in Africa, has projected the BDP to win 56 percent of the vote.
Election campaigning has been dominated by the economic empowerment of citizens.
While Botswana’s economy is one of the best-performing in Africa, this is not reflected in the socio-economic well-being of a majority of its citizens.
Alongside neighbors South Africa and Namibia, Botswana has one of the highest geographic concentrations of income inequality in the world.
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