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Guyana kicks off parliament, president elections

Xinhua, May 12, 2015 Adjust font size:

Guyanese citizens elected the country's new parliament and president on Monday, according to reports reaching here from the South American country's capital of Georgetown.

The People's Progressive Party-Civic (PPPC), led by incumbent President Donald Ramotar, and the opposition coalition comprising A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance for Change (AFC) waged a battle for the 65-seat parliament.

The victorious party will organize the cabinet and its presidential candidate will become the country's next president.

Polls opened at 6 a.m. local time (1000 GMT) and closed 12 hours later. Some 570,000 registered electorates were supposed to cast their votes at more than 2,000 polling stations around the country.

The election commission said the voting went on smoothly and the result would be expected to come out on Wednesday.

In Guyana, elections usually take place every five years. The current elections were scheduled in 2016, following the last one in 2011, where the PPPC became the largest party in the parliament with 32 seats, while APNU took 26 and the AFC, 7.

The dispute between the Ramotar administration and the opposition-controlled parliament on the fiscal policy resulted in the early elections.

Last year, the APNU and the AFC called on a non-confident vote against the Ramotar administration. In return, the president suspended and dismissed the parliament.

The PPPC has won the past five consecutive elections since 1992 and Ramotar has served as president for two times.

But this time the 65-year-old statesman and his party have faced tough challenges as the two parliamentary opposition parties formed a political coalition ahead of the elections.

The coalition's presidential candidate David Granger, a 69-year-old retired army commander, insisted that his country needs better security conditions and his party could do better in fighting drug, guns, and corruption.

Both Ramotar and Granger told local media after casting their ballot that they are "confident" about the victory. Endi