AFP - Malawians voted Tuesday in national elections dominated by fears of hunger and poverty, with President Bingu wa Mutharika trying to win his party's first majority against a united opposition.
   
The balloting unfolded peacefully, the election commission said, but police raided a radio station supportive of the opposition just two hours before polling stations opened.
   
Police said three staffers at Joy Radio were arrested. Lloyd Zawanda, a senior editor at the station, said police seized a tape containing a satirical programme and were allowing them only to broadcast music.
   
"We are waiting to hear if they have been charged, and the radio station has been told not to air any other programmes," he said.
   
The raid marred an otherwise calm day of voting, with returns from some districts expected later Tuesday and final results Thursday.
   
The station is owned by former president Bakili Muluzi, who is backing opposition leader John Tembo bid's to unseat Mutharika.
   
Mutharika, a 75-year-old economist, is banking on the popularity of his 183-million-dollar seed and fertiliser subsidy scheme, which has helped Malawi grow enough food to feed itself for the last three years after a crippling famine in 2005.
   
"Things are much better now, security has improved, hunger has ended, food prices have remained unchanged for a few years," said Raymond Chipo, a 43-year-old carpenter, who voted in Malawi's biggest township of Ndirande, in Blantyre.
   
"But we're voting to see more development. There are many things still lacking. We'd like to see the government provide housing, loans for small businesses," he said.
   
Poverty and hunger remain the overriding issues for most of Malawi's 13 million people.
   
Half the population lives on less than a dollar a day, leaving them at constant risk of hunger simply if the rains turn bad.
   
One in 10 adults is HIV-positive, and AIDS has orphaned more than half a million children, while driving life expectancy down to 43 years.
   
Mutharika is running against Tembo, the main opposition leader and once the right-hand man to late dictator Kamuzu Banda, who ruled this southern African country with an iron fist for three decades.
   
Tembo has struggled to shake his links to the atrocities of Banda's regime, but his campaign enjoyed a surprise boost with Muluzi's endorsement.
   
Muluzi, who unseated Banda 15 years ago in Malawi's first multi-party polls, had repeatedly tried to return to power himself but was smacked down by the courts last weekend, with a ruling that he could not avoid a constitutional two-term limit.
   
Muluzi had handpicked Mutharika as his successor when he stepped down five years ago, only to see his protege turn against him and form his own Democratic Progressive party, which is contesting national polls for the first time.
   
Mutharika's party holds fewer than one third of the 193 seats in parliament, leaving him unable to pass major legislation and forcing him to fend off impeachment attempts.
   
Analysts say Mutharika is unlikely to walk away with a majority, even though Malawi has emerged as one of Africa's fastest-growing economies under his stewardship.
   
For decades Malawi's economy grew by an average of two percent, but the figure has jumped to seven percent over the last three years, according to the International Monetary Fund, due to growth in telecommunications, tobacco sales and bumper maize harvests.
   
Mutharika has also launched an anti-corruption drive that has caught Muluzi up in dozens of charges accusing the former president of embezzling 12 million dollars in donor funds.