War-torn Sierra Leone is looking to local elections on Saturday as a major leap forward in its rehabilitation after a decade of rebel conflict that decimated the tiny west African state.

The first local councils in more than three decades will be responsible for municipal transportation, sanitation and regulation of goods and services, further decentralizing government after a generation of martial law, military rule and all-out lawlessness.

Observers are predicting a rout for the ruling Sierra Leone People's Party, which has already claimed 77 unopposed seats from the 306 on offer. Another 84 seats are going uncontested in the rural north and west.

"The campaign went on much to our expectations," SLPP party secretary Prince Harding told AFP.

The party of the palm tree received another boost Thursday when 31 independent candidates in the SLPP eastern and southern strongholds backed out and threw their support behind the ruling party.

Standing in the way of the steamrolling SLPP is the main opposition All People's Congress and four other minor parties, which are mostly focusing on the Western district around the capital Freetown.

"We are on the forward march and will give the SLPP a good run for their money," said a confident APC party secretary Osman Yansaneh.

After a violence-free election campaign, officials are confident that a vast majority of the 2,27-million registered voters will turn out on Saturday. Civil society observers disagree, however, saying voter apathy and disenfranchisement felt by the mostly rural population could keep turnout low.

Five years of a massive UN operation and outpouring of international aid have done little to improve the dire straits facing most of Sierra Leone's five million people, most of whom eke out a living on less than one dollar a day.

That elections are being held at all is a major achievement for Sierra Leone, said political historian Donald Davies.

Years of single-party rule under Siaka Stevens eliminated the need for the local councils, and the glimmer of hope for multi-party democracy under Joseph Momoh in the early 1990s was quashed by the uprising of the Revolutionary United Front, which sparked a decade of war considered among the most brutal in modern history.

As many as 200 000 people were killed and thousands more maimed and mutilated in the war that raged until 2001.

"Now there is sustained peace, there is no more war, and people are ready to take back responsibility for making their country work," said Davies.

Ballot papers and boxes, manufactured in England and shipped over in tightly-secured containers, have been delivered to the more than 4 000 polling stations set up in movie theatres, schools, churches and other public buildings around the Atlantic coastal country.

Commonwealth observers, backed by some 1 500 civil society representatives will monitor the polls. UN peacekeepers joined by retrained members of Sierra Leone's national police force will be deployed nationwide, particularly in the Western district around Freetown, to maintain order.

"I am quite satisfied with the security arrangement for the election," electoral commissioner Eugene Davies told AFP.

Funding the $8-million election campaign had proved a challenge for the donor-driven Sierra Leone government, amid lingering concerns over corruption during the 2002 presidential and parliamentary vote.

Donors came down hard on the government, demanding that action be taken to clear up past allegations and have closely monitored the campaign's transparency and spending records.

A Freetown-based official with the European Union, which ultimately reversed its decision to withhold two million euros from the campaign, said there had been "significant" progress to meet demands from international partners in the run-up to elections. - Sapa-AFP