By Simon Gardner

MALE, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Maldives President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's party took an early lead in a poll to decide which democratic model to adopt, results showed on Sunday, in a vote seen as a test for Asia's longest serving ruler.

The remote Indian Ocean island chain best known as a luxury honeymoon destination and playground for Hollywood stars like Tom Cruise, is choosing between a British-style parliament and a U.S.-style presidency to reform an autocratic system likened to a sultanate of old.

Gayoom, who has ruled for 29 years and whose aides say will run again in the first multi-party election due next year, has endorsed the presidential model but his opponents say he is dragging his feet on pledged reforms and say it is time he went.

"We are confident of victory. We have an early lead of more than 50 percent and I think that is an endorsement that President Gayoom's reform agenda is genuine," Ibrahim Shafiu, chief spokesman and poll coordinator for Gayoom's Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP), told Reuters.

"And though we are a little off track in the progress of reforms, clearly the larger proportion of Maldivians still has faith in the governance of the president."

However early provisional results, which showed 45,798 people voting with the president and 22,338 voting against, included several islands viewed as Gayoom strongholds and the main opposition's voting backbone in the densely populated capital of Male was not yet in.

There were no details on how many of the 176,500 eligible voters, mostly Sunni Muslims, had turned out for the poll.

Gayoom's DRP and the main opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) accuse each other of voter intimidation and breaking election rules. Election officials said ballot papers were short at some stations but overall the vote appeared to be fair.

RIGHTS RECORD

Gayoom's critics say he is stalling on implementing a raft of democratic reforms pledged in late 2004 to revamp the power structure in the face of harsh criticism of the government's rights record.

His opponents billed a vote for a parliamentary system as a vote for him to quit, saying revenues from 89 luxury island resorts -- some charging well over $1,000 a night for rooms on stilts over azure lagoons -- are not benefiting the half of the population who live in poverty on a dollar a day.

"We have had him for the last 29 years, and only now he is promising to make the judiciary independent. He could have done it at any time," said building contractor Ahmed Shahmeen, sitting by a jetty in Male as ferries bobbed in clear waters that have made the cluster a top scuba destination.

"He hasn't done much on healthcare, education. He just wants to stay on in power. There is a big void."

Dissent has also flared within the ranks of Gayoom's cabinet, which under existing rules he handpicks and appoints.

Two leading members of his government quit earlier this month, accusing him of stalling on a new constitution and judicial independence in a country that only legalised the existence of political parties in 2005.

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