The polling of Singapore's 10th general election, which started at 8:00 a.m. local time (0000 GMT) on Saturday, is underway.

More than 1.22 million Singaporeans are casting their votes at 422 polling stations islandwide.

Of them, 553 overseas voters will be voting at eight polling centers in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, London, Washington, San Francisco, Canberra and Tokyo, which is the city state's first overseas voting.

As of 1:00 p.m. local time (0500 GMT), more than 560,000 electors have voted, accounting for 46.32 percent of the total number, according to an update issued by the Elections Department.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong toured six of the polling stations in his Ang Mo Kio Group Representation Constituency (GRC), where his People's Action Party (PAP) is contested by the Workers' Party (WP), saying that there is a good feeling on the ground, said a Channel NewsAsia report.

President S. R. Nathan, Foreign Minister George Yeo and Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan have cast their votes in the morning.

The ruling PAP led by Lee has secured 37 of the 84 parliamentary seats in seven uncontested GRCs immediately after nomination on April 27, while the opposition parties, including the WP, the Singapore Democratic Alliance (SDA) and the Singapore Democratic Party are contesting the remaining 47 seats in all the nine Single Member Constituencies (SMCs) and the other seven of the 14 GRCs.

Only those registered voters who reside in these 16 contested constituencies have the chance to vote.

This is Lee's first general election since he became Prime Minister in August 2004 and it is also for the first time since 1988 that the PAP did not win a majority of the total seats available to declare victory in a general election on nomination day.

Singapore's last general election was held in November 2001, in which the PAP got 75 percent of the votes and won 82 of the 84 seats, while the WP and the SDA gained one seat each.

Source: Xinhua