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Voters were queuing outside a polling station in Yangon before it opened at 6 a.m. local time on Sunday (2330 GMT Saturday), waiting to casting their ballots in Myanmar's general election.
The voters belong to the Bo Cho ward-2 constituency of Yangon's Bahan town where there are 2,500 eligible voters.
They believed the election was totally different from that of 2010. "It is more free and the competition is intensified," an old local voter told Xinhua.
Another young man said, "All are eager to see a development change. That is why I come to cast my vote."
"We hope through this election, it would bring about national development," he added.
Three police officers were seen guarding the polling station set up in a school.
The police said they were well trained before they took up security duty.
The government deployed 40,000 police force nationwide to guard the polling which is closely watched by more than 10,500 local and international observers.
Myanmar's multi-party general election began across the country on Sunday, with 33.5 million eligible voters casting ballots at more than 46,000 polling stations.
A total of 6,038 candidates from 91 political parties and 310 independent runners are competing for more than 1,000 seats at three levels of the parliament in the historic election.
Of the total, 1,733 candidates are vying for seats of the House of Representatives (Lower House), 886 for the House of Nationalities (Upper House), 3,419 for Region or State Parliament.
This year's election pits the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), led by President U Thein Sein, against the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), headed by Aung San Suu Kyi.
The polling stations will close at 4:00 p.m. local times (1130 GMT) when counting of the votes will be done.
Voters said they were eager to wait for the release of the results of their polling booth. Enditem
