(dpa) - Polls opened across Armenia Tuesday morning in an election that is as much a judgement of outgoing President Robert Kocharian's decade at the helm of the small Caucasus state as they are about electing a successor.
While Kocharian's preferred successor, Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian, 53, led in pre-election surveys, there were strong questions about whether he would be able to win a first round outright because he would need more than 50 per cent of the vote.
The most prominent challenge comes from Armenia's first president, Levon Ter-Petrosian, 63, who made a dramatic comeback from hermetic retirement as a widely unpopular leader associated with the country's post-Soviet economic collapse.
Armenia's current construction boom and steady growth speak for Sarkisian's bid, but widespread perceptions of corruption dog the top candidates.
Former parliamentary speaker Artur Baghdasarian, a 39-year-old populist politician calling for Armenia's accession to the European Union and NATO, was expected to finish second in the polls.
In all, nine candidates were on Tuesday's ballots.
The voting is to last 10 hours in the election for which 2.3 million voters are registered. A new election law passed last year forbids voting by Armenian nationals living abroad.
Strong lobbying by Armenia's large expatriate communities in the United States and Europe, mainly in France, have resulted in a disproportionate amount of international interest in the small Caucasus state's vote.
The United States, meanwhile, has threatened to withhold 235 million dollars in aid while further diplomatic relations with the European Union might be contingent on the fairness of Tuesday's vote, which was being monitored by 620 international observers.
In the election run-up, Sarkisian has been accused by the opposition of abusing his government post to secure television coverage and blanket advertising across the country.