First post-Gaddafi election begins

Jul 7 2012

Libyans have started voting in the first parliamentary election since last year's ousting and killing of long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi, taking a major step forward in the country's tumultuous transition to democratic rule.

The election for a 200-seat legislature is being held amid intense regional rivalries, fears of violence and calls for a boycott. However, lines began to form outside polling centres more than an hour before they were scheduled to open in the capital Tripoli.

Policemen and army soldiers were guarding the centres, searching voters as well as election workers.

"I have a strange but beautiful feeling today," said dentist Adam Thabet, waiting outside a polling centre in the capital Tripoli. "We are free at last after years of fear. We knew this day was coming, but we were afraid it could take long to come."

Libya's election is the latest fruit of Arab Spring revolts against authoritarian leaders. It is likely to be dominated by Islamist parties of all shades, a similar outcome to elections held in the country's neighbours Egypt and Tunisia, which had had their own, though much less bloody, uprisings.

There are four major contenders in the race, ranging from a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated party and another Islamist coalition at one end of the spectrum to a secular-minded party led by a Western-educated former rebel prime minister on the other.

"This is history in the making," declared 26-year-old medic Farid Fadil as he waited to vote outside a polling centre in Tripoli.

After four decades of Gaddafi's erratic one-man rule, Fadil like many Libyans was overjoyed at the chance to choose his country's leaders: "We were ruled by a man who saw himself as the state."

In the oil-rich east, where there is a thriving autonomy movement, calls for a boycott and pre-election violence have cast a shadow over the vote.

Protesters torched ballot boxes in 14 out of 19 polling centres in the eastern town of Ajdabiya, according to former rebel commander in the area Ibrahim Fayed.