Harare: Zimbabweans were to head to the polls today in an election, which could end Robert Mugabe's 28-year rule as his country buckles under the weight of the world's highest inflation rate.

Mugabe, his ex-finance minister Simba Makoni and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai are locked in a three-way battle seen by analysts as the biggest challenge to face the president since he took office nearly three decades ago.

Apart from a president, some 5.9 million eligible voters in this former British colony are choosing 210 members of parliament, 60 senators and 1,958 local government councillors.

Some 9,000 polling stations open at 1030 IST and are set to close 12 hours later. The polls in Zimbabwe, a landlocked southern African country of 13 million people, are the culmination of a bruising but largely peaceful nine-week campaign.

The election takes place as Zimbabwe is grappling with the impact of the world s highest rate of inflation - officially put at 100,580.2 per cent - and an unemployment level which has breached the 80 per cent mark.

Once seen as the region's breadbasket, the country is now suffering from previously unheard of shortages of even the most basic foodstuffs such as cooking oil and bread.

Critics blame the strongman Mugabe, who at 84 years is already Africa's oldest leader, for the country's woes. But Mugabe, who has ruled the ex-British colony since independence in 1980, has blamed the economic chaos on the West, which imposed sanctions intended to only hit his inner circle after he allegedly rigged his 2002 re-election.
Source : PTI