Botswanians will go to polls on Saturday in their country's ninth general elections, with President Festus Mogae highly expected to win another five-year term in office.

Mogae, 65, is one of four candidates running for the presidency,and his ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) and four other political parties have fielded 176 contestants for 57 seats in an expanded parliament.

Competing with Mogae for the top post are Otsweletse Moupo, of the Botswana National Front (BNF), Otlaadisa Koosaletse, of the Botswana Congress Party (BCP), and Dick Bayford, of the New Democratic Front (NDF).

The other four political parties that have fielded parliamentary candidates are the BCP, the NDF, the MELS Social Democratic Party (SDP), and the tripartite pact comprising the BNF,the Botswana Peoples Party (BPP) and the Botswana Alliance Movement (BAM).

According to Botswana's electoral law, voters cast their votes for members of the parliament, the National Assembly, who in turn elect president.

More than 552,000 people, or 68 percent of the eligible voters,are registered to cast their votes at 2,179 polling stations across the country.

Policemen and election officers due on duty Saturday and Botswanians living abroad cast their ballots on Oct. 16 for their preferred parliamentary candidates in early voting.

The final results of Saturday's voting are expected on Sunday and a swearing-in ceremony to inaugurate the new president is scheduled for Nov. 2.

It is widely believed that Mogae's BDP, which has been in powerever since the country's independence from British rule in 1966, would clinch the general elections again with the majority of the votes and thus guarantee a second term for Mogae.

Mogae, who studied economics in Britain before working in senior government posts, first claimed the spotlight as deputy to former Botswana president Quett Masire, then as his successor when Masire stepped down in 1998.

He started his first five-year term in office as president in 1999, when the BDP won 33 of the 40 elected seats in the National Assembly.

Botswana, with a population of 1.76 million and an area of 582,000 sq. km, is one of the world's biggest diamond producers and fastest growing economies, registering a 7.4 percent growth in 2003 and per capita gross domestic product of more than 3,000 US dollars.

However, the southern African country has been faced with one of the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in the world in recent years, as more than one in three adult Botswanians are infected with HIV or have developed AIDS.

Source: Xinhua