Key facts about Afghan election in 2009

KABUL, Aug. 20 (Xinhua) -- The people of Afghanistan are getting ready to go to the polling stations on Thursday to elect the country's president and members of provincial councils.

This is the second presidential and provincial councils' election held in the post-Taliban country on Aug. 20.

Some 17 million Afghans eligible to vote is expected to go to the polling stations across the country amid tight security.

There are 32 presidential hopefuls including two ladies contesting for the country's highest executive post while over 3,000, with 10 percent of them women, are in run to secure 420 seatsof provincial councils in the war-torn central Asian state.

Prominent among running for presidency are incumbent president Hamid Karzai and his three former cabinet ministers Abdullah Abdullah, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai and Ramazan Bashardost.

Initial result would be announced 48 hours after voting while preliminary result would be announced on Sept. 3 and the final result of the polling will be made public on Sept. 17.

There are nearly 7,000 voting centers and some 29,000 polling booths throughout the country.

However, hundreds of polling stations are expected to be closeddown due to security reasons.

The voting to elect president is secret and direct and anyone secures 51 percent of the votes will take oath as president of thecountry for a five-year term.

In case, none of the contesters for presidential post bags the ratio of the votes in the first round, a run-off election will be held within two weeks between the top two candidates.

More than 200,000 Afghans and the NATO-led multinational peacekeeping force ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) have been assigned to ensure security for the benchmark election.

However, there are more than 250,000 national and internationalobservers including 2,000 from foreign countries, with 67 of them form European Union.

Taliban militants, who described the election as a U.S.-sponsored conspiracy, called on Afghans to boycott the elections and vowed to interrupt the voting process.