Polls opened in a joyful though serious mood Sunday in Tunisia\'s first-ever free elections, with an Islamic party poised to win nine months after the surprise toppling of a dictator that sparked the Arab Spring.
 

Polls opened in a joyful though serious mood Sunday in Tunisia\'s first-ever free elections, with an Islamic party poised to win nine months after the surprise toppling of a dictator that sparked the Arab Spring. (AFP Photo/Fethi Belaid)

"Tunisia today offers the world a bouquet of flowers of liberty and dignity," voter Houcine Khlifi, 62, told AFP while queuing with a few dozen others at a central Tunis polling station since 6.00 am (0500 GMT) -- an hour before polling stations opened.

"We break with the past and we come to life again. Thanks to the revolution that allowed us to end the tyranny," Khlifi said with tears in his eyes after casting his vote -- not having slept all night with excitement.

Some 7.2 million people are eligible to elect a 217-member assembly that will rewrite the constitution and appoint a new caretaker government after decades of autocratic rule under Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, ousted in January in a popular revolt against poverty, unemployment and corruption.

Elections chief Kamel Jendoubi has voters to turn out in numbers "for the great Tunisia, its future, and the martyrs of the revolution who made this historic day possible."

In what is widely regarded as the Arab Spring\'s first democratic test, hundreds of people queued early morning outside polling stations in the capital and its suburbs, impatient but disciplined.

"Freedom was expensive, we have to pay our dues!" hotel employee Mondher Hamdi, 23, said before setting out to cast his ballot.

About 300 people were killed in the uprising that ousted Ben Ali and sparked region-wide revolts that claimed their latest Arab strongman Thursday with the killing of Moamer Kadhafi of Libya, which will declare its official "liberation" on the same day Tunisians cast their ballots.

Unlike its neighbour, which descended into civil war, Tunisia\'s path to democracy has been mostly peaceful apart from some protests against the pace of transformation and sporadic violent outbursts by conservative Islamists against secularisation.

The Islamic Ennahda party, banned under Ben Ali, is tipped to win the biggest bloc of votes.

Its leader Rached Ghannouchi, until recently in exile, arrived early with his family at a voting station in the El Manzah suburb and was stopped by fellow voters as he headed for the entrance.

"The queue, the queue! Democracy starts here," they objected, and Ghannouchi made his way to the back of the line more than a kilometre (half a mile) long.

"This turnout demonstrates the people\'s thirst for democracy," he said with a smile.

Interim Prime Minister Beji Caid Essebsi voted in La Soukra in the north of Tunis, saying that on this day he was "just a citizen".

This is the first-ever open contest in a country where the outcome of elections used to be a foregone conclusion, and the first run by an independent electoral body after decades of ballot stuffing by the interior ministry under Ben Ali.

Under the father of independence Habib Bourguiba, elections were dispensed with as he declared himself president for life, while his successor Ben Ali won successive charade polls with scores as high as 99.91 percent in 1994.

The multi-party body elected Sunday will have the loaded task of appointing an interim president and government for the duration of the constitution drafting process, expected to take about a year, in preparation for new elections.

The constituent assembly will also have to choose what type of government the country will have and how to guarantee basic liberties, including women\'s rights which many fear Ennahda will seek to diminish despite its assurances to the contrary.

The progressive left remains divided with party leaders having failed to form a pre-vote alliance.

Elections chief Kamel Jendoubi on Saturday declared his ISIE polling commission "ready and confident", while the European Union observer mission said there was "almost no chance of cheating or falsifying results".

Ennahda had warned of a risk of vote rigging and vowed a fresh uprising if it detected fraud, but Ghannouchi stressed at a final rally Friday that the party would recognise the results "no matter Ennahda\'s score."

In polls witnessed by some 40,000 security force members and 13,000 observers, Tunisians can choose from more than 11,000 candidates -- half of them women -- representing 80 political parties and several thousand independents.

Vote counting will start as soon as polling stations close at 7.00 pm (1800 GMT), with results updated live throughout the night.

The final tally will be released on Monday.