Comorans are going to vote in presidential polls Sunday. It is seen as a test of whether the poverty-stricken Indian Ocean archipelago has broken a cycle of coups and inter-island strife that has hampered development since it declared independence in 1975.

Here are some facts about the polls:

Comorans agreed in 2001, following an elaborate reconciliation, to share power between a national government and the trio of islands -- Grande Comore, Anjouan and Moheli. Each island gets the federal presidency every four years.

Incumbent President Azali Assoumani, from Grand Comore, seized power via a bloodless coup in 1999 and remained in office by winning the first election in 2002.

In that rotation, it is now Anjouan's turn. Moheli, the smallest island of the Union of Comoros, is due to take presidency in 2010.

The union president has two deputies who must not come from the same island as the president.

This year's presidential polls are being closely watched by Comoros' neighbors, the African Union (AU), the Arab League and the Francophonie group of French-speaking nations.

Some 460 African Union soldiers and medics led by South Africa began operations in the capital Moroni on March 30.

Their mission is to ensure security in the polls and that Comoran troops do not interfere in the voting. The Comoran government has ordered its soldiers to remain in their barracks.

The presidential polls this year are widely seen as a test of Comoros' power-sharing arrangements and its quest to end its image as a chronically unstable country.

The first round of voting was held on April 16, when 117,000 Anjouanese from a population of 250,000 narrowed down 14 candidates to three, namely popular Islamic leader and former parliamentarian Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi, National Assembly Vice President Mohammed Janfari and former prime minister Abderemane Ibrahim Halidi.

The second round scheduled for May 14 will be a nationwide election, in which an estimated 300,000 voters of the three islands are expected to cast their ballots.

Source: Xinhua