Libyans go to the polls in first post-Gaddafi vote

Fears of militia violence and calls for a boycott threatened today to mar Libya’s first nationwide parliamentary election.

The election is a milestone on the oil-rich nation’s rocky path towards democracy after the ousting of dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

The vote for a 200-member transitional parliament caps a tumultuous nine-month transition towards democracy for the country after a bitter civil war that ended with the capture and killing of Gaddafi in October.

Many Libyans had hoped the country would quickly thrive and become a magnet for investment, but it has suffered a virtual collapse in authority that has left formidable challenges. Armed militias still operate independently, and deepening regional and tribal divisions erupt into violence with alarming frequency.

On the eve of today’s vote, gunmen shot down a helicopter carrying polling materials near the eastern city of Benghazi, the birthplace of the revolution, killing one election worker, said Saleh Darhoub, a spokesman for the ruling National Transitional Council. The crew survived after a crash landing.

Prime minister Abdurrahim el-Keib vowed the government would ensure a safe vote today and condemned the election worker’s killing and those who sought to derail the vote.

“Any action aimed at hindering the election process is against the supreme interest of the nation and serves only the remnants of the old regime,” he said next to a screen showing the face of the murdered worker.

“It is threatening to the future of the revolution and its accomplishments ... and an attempt to stop democracy for which Libyans sacrificed their souls.”

It was not immediately clear who was behind the shooting, but it was the latest unrest in a messy run-up to the vote that has put a spotlight on some of the major fault lines in the country – the east-west divide and the Islamist-versus-secularist political struggle.

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. The laws allocate the east less than a third of the parliamentary seats, with the rest going to the western region that includes Tripoli and the sparsely-settled desert south.

The east was systematically neglected and marginalised for decades by Gaddafi and easterners are sensitive to anything they perceive of as an attempt to prolong that neglect after the sacrifices they made during the civil war.

After the NTC passed election laws, several tribal leaders along with former rebel commanders in the east declared self-rule, set up their own council and formed their own army, while saying that they would boycott elections and even work to prevent today’s vote from taking place. They are pushing for semi-autonomy for the east.

Former rebel fighters from the east in pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns took control over oil refineries in the towns of Ras Lanouf, Brega and Sidr on Thursday, shutting down the facilities to pressure the NTC to cancel the vote.

Earlier this week, ex-rebel fighters and other angry protesters in Benghazi and in the nearby town of Ajdabiya attacked election offices, setting fire to ballot papers and other voting materials.

Fadlallah Haroun, a former rebel commander in the east’s regional capital Benghazi and proponent of eastern semi-autonomy and an election boycott said: “We don’t want Tripoli to rule all of Libya.”

He said boycott supporters would take to the streets on election day to “prevent people from voting, because this is a vote that serves those who stole the revolution from us”. He said they would not take up arms but when asked how they would stop voters, he said: “We will see tomorrow.”

Nearly 2.9 million Libyans, or 80% of those eligible to vote, have registered for the election and more than 3,000 candidates have plastered the country with posters and billboards. Polls are to be open from 8am to 8pm local time, with results expected within a week.

There are four major parties in the race, ranging from the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood on one end of the spectrum to a secular-minded party led by a Western-educated former rebel prime minister on the other.

The new parliament initially had two missions: to elect a new transitional government to replace the one appointed by the NTC and to put together a 60-member panel to write the country’s constitution. Each of Libya’s three regions was to have 20 seats on the panel.

But in a last-minute move the NTC decreed that the constitutional panel would instead be elected by direct vote, leaving the parliament only with the task of forming a government, angering many candidates who campaigned largely on the basis of their role in overseeing the drafting of the constitution.