(7 Sep 2013) Polls opened on Saturday morning in the Maldives as the island nation votes for its 10th President.
The incumbent president and presidential candidate Mohamed Waheed Hassan cast his vote early in the morning as soon as the polls opened in the second multi-party election ever held in the Maldives.
Hundreds of voters queued up to vote in the capital city of Male.
They marked their choice of candidates with pen on a sheet of paper and cast their votes inside a sealed ballot box.
The election officials then marked the fingernails of those who had voted with ink, to ensure that each person votes only once.
The Maldives - more than 1,100 islands scattered across the Indian Ocean - are sharply divided along political lines.
The first democratically elected president Mohamed Nasheed insists his former deputy helped force him out in a coup d'etat.
And the brother of the longtime dictator of the country, where widespread unemployment exists alongside some of the world's most expensive beach resorts, now wants to be president himself.
The Maldives had its first democratic presidential elections just five years ago, after 30 years of dictatorship under Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.
The day after his resignation, Nasheed claimed he was forced to step down at gunpoint as part of a coup backed by Gayoom.
In protests that followed, some of Nasheed's supporters were injured in a police crackdown.
Though a domestic commission of inquiry has dismissed Nasheed's claim, the country has been in political turmoil ever since.
Nasheed has repeatedly dismissed as illegal the government of his former vice president - now President Mohamed Waheed Hassan.
While there is little reliable polling in the Maldives, Nasheed and Yaamin Abdul Qayyoom, Gayoom's brother, are thought to be the two leading candidates.
Hassan is also running, but his party is smaller.
He was elected vice president in the first democratic election in an alliance with Nasheed.
A fourth candidate, Qasim Ibrahim, is a wealthy businessman.
The next president must form a credible government, build up public confidence in government institutions and deal with pressing issues including high unemployment, increasing drug addiction among young people and improving transportation among the far-off islands.
Nasheed and Gayoom hope to win in the first round by securing 51 percent of the vote.
If no candidate wins 51 percent, the top two will face one another in second round of voting on September. 28.
Some 240,000 people are eligible to vote this year.
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