CTVNews.ca Staff
Published Saturday, Jul. 7, 2012 6:16AM EDT
Last Updated Saturday, Jul. 7, 2012 11:32AM EDT
Libyans lined up at polls across the North African country Saturday in the first free parliamentary elections since the ouster and killing of dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
The vote didn’t go as smoothly as hoped after calls for a boycott, burning of ballots and attacks on polling centres in the country’s east caused disruptions.
Moving Libya away from one-man rule hasn’t been easy, with different tribal factions in the east-west divide of the oil-rich country facing off against each other since the fall of the Gadhafi regime last year.
Complicating matters are the efforts by Islamists to assert power in Libya’s leadership vacuum.
Lines formed outside polling centres more than an hour before they opened in the capital of Tripoli, with security forces standing guard, searching voters and election workers as they entered.
“I have a strange but beautiful feeling today,” dentist Adam Thabet said as he waited his turn to cast a ballot.
“We are free at last after years of fear. We knew this day would come, but we were afraid it would take a lot longer.”
The election for a 200-seat parliament, which will be tasked with forming a new government, is a key milestone after a bitter civil war that ended Gadhafi's four-decade rule.
But the nation of six million people has experienced a rocky transition since he was killed by rebel forces in his home city of Sirte in late October.
Since then armed militias have operated independently, refusing to be brought under the umbrella of a national army, and deepening regional and tribal divisions erupt into violence with alarming frequency.
There’s also growing resentment in the east -- where the uprising began -- over perceived domination by Tripoli in the west of the desert nation.
Some easterners back a boycott of the election and on Saturday protesters torched ballot boxes in 14 out of 19 polling centres in the eastern town of Ajdabiya, said Ibrahim Fayed, a former rebel commander in the area.
On the eve of the vote, gunmen shot down a helicopter carrying polling materials near the eastern city of Benghazi, birthplace of last year's revolution, killing one election worker on board, according to Saleh Darhoub, a spokesman for the ruling National Transitional Council.
The crew survived after a crash landing.
The violence continued Saturday, with protesters, some armed, attacking polling centres in the early hours in the eastern cities of Ajdabiya, Brega and Ras Lanouf, ransacking them and setting ballot papers ablaze.
Protesters attacked a polling station in Benghazi only to be driven back by voters who fired their own weapons in the air indicating the ever-present lawlessness of the country, independent candidate Faiza Ali said.
“Enough with the bloodshed,” she said.
Nouri al-Abar, the head of the election commission, told reporters in Tripoli that 94 per cent of polling centres nationwide were open but acknowledged that “security conditions” prevented ballots from reaching some areas and ballots were destroyed in other cases.
The uprising against Gadhafi was inspired by the Arab Spring revolts that led to the successful ouster of authoritarian leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and later Yemen.
But it morphed into outright civil war as armed rebels battled Libyan regime forces for months.
Islamist parties also have gained influence in Libya and other nations following the ouster of authoritarian regimes run by strongmen like Gadhafi and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak.
There are four major contenders in the Libyan race, ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood-linked party and another Islamist coalition on one end of the spectrum to a secular-minded party led by a Western-educated former rebel prime minister on the other.
Despite the divisions and unrest, the prevailing mood was one of triumph.
“We are celebrating today and we want the whole world to celebrate with us,” Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib said after he cast his ballot in Tripoli.
Many in Libya's oil-rich east feel slighted by the election laws issued by the National Transitional Council, the body that led the rebel cause during the civil war and assumed power after Gadhafi's fall.
The laws allocate the east fewer than a third of the parliamentary seats, with the rest going to the western region that includes Tripoli and the sparsely settled south.
Flush with money, the Muslim Brotherhood's Justice and Construction party has led one of the best organized and most visible election campaigns, and is hoping to become a political force in post-Gadhafi Libya like the Islamists of Egypt and Tunisia.
Three other parties also are expected to perform well: Former prime minister Mahmoud Jibril's secular Alliance of National Forces, former jihadist and rebel commander Abdel-Hakim Belhaj's Al-Watan and the National Front party, one of Libya's oldest political groups, known for organizing several failed assassination attempts against Gadhafi.
With files from The Associated Press
