Niger goes to polls amid opposition boycott

Niger's President Mamadou Tandja on Tuesday forged ahead with a national election seen to tighten his grip on power despite an opposition boycott and international calls for it to be postponed.

But turnout was low in the first half of the day judging from around 50 polling stations visited by an AFP reporter in the capital.

The regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) suspended Niger's membership to express its disapproval of the election, after banning Niamey from convening ECOWAS meetings and from putting up candidates for posts within international organisations.

Tandja, in power for the past decade, defied all international calls to delay the vote to pave way for dialogue with his political opponents in the vast and arid west African nation.

ECOWAS on Sunday sent to Niamey a delegation led by Liberia's President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf for a last-ditch attempt to have Tandja call off the election, but he refused.

ECOWAS leaders told Tandja to delay the vote and open talks with political foes or risk imposition of "full and automatic sanctions".

Niger's opposition is boycotting the vote in protest at the extension of Tandja's mandate, which would have run out in December, through an earlier referendum that it condemned as a "coup d'etat."

The African Union, ECOWAS and the European Union, a major donor, all urged a delay in order to revive political dialogue between Tandja and the opposition, but Interior Minister Albade Abouba said the call to postpone the election is "inappropriate".

"You can not ask people to go back on their word. Elections are not being held for President Tandja," Abouba told reporters.

The 71-year-old Tandja and former army colonel cast his vote early Tuesday at Niamey city hall flanked by heavy security hoping for a "fair and transparent" vote.

"I wish that this day will be good for Niger, that the voting will pass off smoothly and that the elected deputies will be true patriots," he said.

The polls, to fill 113 parliamentary seats, come after Tandja dissolved parliament in June, two months before he held the referendum to prolong his mandate. Around six million people are eligible to vote.

At polling station in Gamkale district on the outskirts of the city, the ballot-paper pad remained virtually intact some two hours after the polls opened. Only two ballot papers were seen in a transparent ballot box at the polling station where some 500 people are eligible to vote.

"People are coming in dribs and drabs," said a policeman posted at the entrance.

In power for 10 years, Tandja on August 4 pressed ahead with a referendum to change the constitution, prolonging his mandate by three years and then opening the way to further elections in which he can stand.

The referendum was widely opposed within Niger and was universally condemned by the international community.

Communications Minister Kassoum Moctar, vowed that "nobody is going to punish us".

"The march towards building a dignified Niger is irreversible," he said on private radio Dounia.

Tandja has argued that he needs more time to complete work undertaken during his two five-year terms in office, where he has sought peace with Tuareg rebels in the desert north of the country and has signed agreements, mainly with France, for the further exploitation of Niger's only resource, uranium.

Niger, one of the world's poorest nations, derives the bulk of its foreign trade income from uranium.