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Saturday's vote is a key milestone in a nine-month transition toward democracy for the country after a bitter civil war that ended Gadhafi's four-decade-long rule. Many Libyans had hoped the oil-rich nation of 6 million would quickly thrive and become a magnet for investment, but the country 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 the 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 Saturday, and condemned the election worker's killing and those who seek to derail the vote. It was not immediately clear who was behind Friday's 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. Flush with money, the Muslim Brotherhood's Justice and Construction party has led one of the best organized and most visible election campaigns, and they are 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 Ahmed Belhaj's Al-Watan and the National Front party, one of Libya's oldest political groups, which is credited with organizing several failed assassination attempts against Gadhafi.
The new parliament initially had two missions: to elect a new transitional government to replace the one appointed by the National Transitional Council 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. However, in a last-minute move, the NTC decreed that the constitutional panel instead will 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.
[Associated
Press;
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