Failure of this election could drive the world’s seventh poorest country into even more despair.

Twice-elected Madagascar President Marc Ravalomana has produced 500 ballot papers handed to him last night before the polls opened this morning.

They come from men who told him they’d been given stacks of voters registration cards and told to use them at as many polling stations as possible.

Ravalomanana fears such cheating could rob him of any change of beating Andry Rajoelina who ousted him in a 2009 coup that drove Madagascar into isolation, instability and poverty.

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