Bahamian voters weigh economy vs. scandal

NASSAU, May 2 (Reuters) Bahamians head to the polls today to decide whether Prime Minister Perry Christie's party has earned five more years in office because of its economic record or deserves the boot for a wave of scandals.

Christie predicts his Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) will win at least 28 of the 41 seats in the House of Assembly, while Free National Movement (FNM) leader Hubert Ingraham is confident he'll regain the post of prime minister, which he held from 1992 to 2002.

Observers expect a close race and the leader of the party with a majority becomes prime minister of the Atlantic nation of 320,000 people and 700 islands.

The opposition party accused ruling party candidates of offering cash and jobs for votes, allegations the PLP vigorously denied.

Still, election regulators banned cameras and cell phones from polling centers amid rumors that some people had been offered payments if they presented photographic proof of how they voted.

The polls are open from 8 am to 6 pm, with results expected late today.

Christie's PLP, traditionally seen as the party of the black majority in the former British colony, won by a landslide in 2002.

He says his administration has boosted home ownership, brought in an unprecedented 20 billion dollars of foreign investment and built more classrooms in five years than his predecessor did in 10.

His yellow-clad partisans dance and chant ''Continue the Program'' at his rallies.

But his party has been beset by ethical questions, including allegations that immigration officials fast-tracked a residency permit for pinup model and billionaire's widow Anna Nicole Smith, who lived in the Bahamas until her accidental drug overdose death in Florida in February.

Ingraham says the ruling party has allowed foreign investors and foreign workers to profit at the expense of Bahamians, especially in the tourism industry that employs half of the islands' workforce and generates 40 per cent of its GDP.

His partisans wear red and call the election ''A Matter of Trust.'' Ingraham's FNM was associated with the predominantly white ''Bay Street Boys'' who ran the Bahamas prior to independence from Britain in 1973.

He has criticized Christie as too lax in reigning in scandal and promised that ''If I find a hand in the cookie jar I will cut it off.'' Vandals marred the traditionally tranquil campaigning by torching an empty FNM campaign base and firing a bullet through the window of an empty PLP office.

Candidates on both sides pursued libel and slander suits against their rivals and the American Embassy took the unusual step of issuing a statement denying allegations that one of the FNM candidates faced criminal charges in the United States.

REUTERS SZ BD1133