Voting for presidential election begins in Uzbekistan

TASHKENT - Voting for presidential election began Sunday as polling stations opened at 6 am local time (0100 GMT) in Uzbekistan.

According to the country's Central Election Commission, over 20 million registered voters would cast their votes at over 9,000 polling stations set up in all the 14 administrative districts of Uzbekistan, as well as in foreign countries.

Preliminary voting results are supposed to be announced later in the day by the commission.

The commission said in an online statement that about 300 observers from 43 countries are monitoring the election, along with five international organizations, including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Those competing with the incumbent President Islam Karimov are Khatamjan Ketmanov of the People's Democratic Party, Nariman Umarov of the "Adolat" (Justice) Social Democratic Party and Akmal Saidov of the National Revival Democratic Party.

Karimov has ruled the Central Asian nation for over two decades, since before the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

The newly-elected president would serve a five-year term, according to a constitutional amendment endorsed by the country's Senate in 2011 that cut the president tenure of seven years set in 2002.