World News : Voting ends in hard-fought Jamaica general election:LATEST NEWS TECHNOLOGY AND FINANCE

KINGSTON Dec 29 (World News) - Voting ended in Jamaica on Thursday as Prime Minister Andrew Holness sought a popular mandate to tackle the Caribbean country's deepening economic woes in a closely contested general election.

On the eve of the voting, polls showed Jamaica's two long dominant parties, the governing Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) and People's National Party (PNP), running neck-and-neck in parliamentary elections focused on the island's stagnant and debt-ridden economy.

Police and soldiers stood guard at polling stations across the country throughout the day. Jamaica has a history of election violence but the run-up to the vote was one of its most peaceful in years.

Holness, a 39-year-old former education minister, was hoping to keep the center-right JLP in power for a second consecutive term.

The country's youngest-ever prime minister, he took office in October after the governing party suffered a blow when his predecessor surprisingly resigned.

The PNP is led by Portia Simpson Miller, a former prime minister who became Jamaica's first female leader in 2006 and has vowed to make Holness one of the shortest-serving premiers in the island nation's history.

The winner of the election will face the stiff challenge of re-invigorating the economy in one of the world's most indebted countries.

Polls closed at 5 p.m. EST (2200 GMT) and the Electoral Commission of Jamaica was expected to announce the winning party, based on preliminary official results, sometime before midnight. There were no reports of any serious voting irregularities or violence marring the election.

Initial reports from election monitors said less than half of Jamaica's 1.6 million eligible voters had cast ballots in the race, which was held against a grim economic backdrop.

Although one of the Caribbean's more developed economies, Jamaica is saddled with a public debt load now totaling more than 120 percent of its gross domestic product.

BURDENSOME DEBT

The country's burdensome debt has proved a drag on the economy, which is dependent on tourism and has failed to grow in the past four years, sputtering since the JLP took power.

Unemployment has risen from 9.8 percent in 2007 to 12.9 percent.

Devon Jameson, a 31-year-old accountant, said the struggling economy led him to vote for the opposition.

"The JLP has wrecked this country with its poor economic policies," he said. "Our national debt is growing, unemployment is rising and poverty is getting worse."

Analysts say the new government likely will be forced to implement unpopular austerity measures, including possible layoffs of state workers, in an effort to shore up the economy after it received a $ 1.27 billion lifeline from the International Monetary Fund last year.

Holness pledged on the campaign trail to spur the economy by attracting private investment to infrastructure projects. He also said the ruling party had successfully reduced crime in the reggae-crazed country, long plagued by criminal gangs, or so-called posses.

Simpson Miller vowed if elected to appeal to the IMF to extend the period Jamaica has to repay any loans to give authorities more leeway to jump-start the economy.

She voiced confidence her party would triumph as she voted at a school in the capital of Kingston. "I feel a wind of change blowing across Jamaica," Simpson Miller told reporters.

The election comes a year earlier than originally scheduled. Worried about the global economic outlook and its implications for Jamaica, Holness called the vote in early December only weeks after being sworn in as prime minister.

Holness was chosen by JLP lawmakers after former Prime Minister Bruce Golding resigned over fallout from his handling of a U.S. request for the extradition of a notorious Jamaican gang leader.

After initially fighting Christopher "Dudus" Coke's extradition to New York on drug-trafficking charges, Golding's administration bowed to U.S. pressure in May 2010 and sent police and the military into Kingston's slums to take him into custody.

Seventy-six people died in ensuing gun battles between government forces and supporters of Coke, once a strong JLP supporter who wielded powerful influence in the slums.

If Holness and the JLP lose the election, it would mark the first time Jamaicans voted out an incumbent government after only one term.

A defeat also would make Holness one of the shortest-serving prime ministers in Jamaican history. That record would still be held by Donald Sangster, who took office in February 1967 but died of illness less than two months later.

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