Kyrgyz voters cast their ballots on Sunday to create the first parliamentary democracy in Central Asia, in an election many hope can unite the country four months after the worst bloodshed in its modern history.
Unique among elections in ex-Soviet Central Asia, voters have no idea which party will win the majority of seats in a new parliament and select a prime minister who will attempt to knit together a country plagued by political and ethnic divisions.
"Our people do not suffer from amnesia. Our people know their history. They will rise quickly to create a parliamentary republic and protect it themselves," President Roza Otunbayeva said after casting her vote in a music school in Bishkek.
After nearly two decades of failed authoritarian rule, interim leaders want to empower a prime minister to restore stability in the former Soviet republic, where clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks killed more than 400 people in June.
The United States, which operates a military air base in the country to support the war in Afghanistan, has vocally embraced the plan to create the first democracy in a region otherwise ruled by presidential strongmen. Russia, which also has an air base in Kyrgyzstan, is an opponent of the parliamentary model, arguing it could expose the country to more violence or a power grab by militants as rival factions vie for influence.
Gennady Danilov, 45, was the first to cast his vote at Polling Station No 1215, a school in the centre of Bishkek. He folded his ballot paper, 70 centimetres in length, and dropped it into a glass box adorned with the Kyrgyz national crest.
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has stationed 40 long-term observers around the country and a further 200 short-term observers arrived for the vote.
"This is a remarkable election so far. We hope this openness and transparency will be reflected on polling day, but there is still a lot of work to be done," Morten Hoeglund, special co-ordinator of the OSCE's short-term observers, told Reuters.
There were some isolated reports of attempted vote-rigging. Presidential chief-of-staff Emilbek Kaptagayev said in a statement two election officials in the southern region of Jalalabad had been charged with issuing extra ballot papers. They could face a seven-year prison term, he said.
Twenty-nine parties have registered for the election, of which six were widely expected to attract a large amount of support from Kyrgyzstan's 2.8 million registered voters - slightly more than half of the country's total population.
Turnout was 42.5 percent by 5 pm (1100 GMT), three hours before polls closed, the Central Election Commission said. The biggest turnout, nearly 50 percent, was in the southern city of Osh, epicentre of the June violence.
Parts of Osh remain in ruins, with many ethnic Uzbeks living in makeshift tents as they attempt to rebuild houses burned in the clashes. Ethnic Uzbeks turned out in large numbers to vote.
"The new authorities must take into account the mistakes of their predecessors," said Maksat Kalykulov, 41, an unemployed ethnic Kyrgyz in Osh. "They have to find and punish those behind these events, otherwise there will be new clashes."
Janez Lenarcic, director for the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), said he was encouraged by the peaceful start to the election in Osh.
All 120 parliament seats will be filled through popular voting for party lists. No single party will be allotted more than 65 seats, regardless of its election result.
Among the frontrunners were the Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan, led by Almazbek Atambayev, deputy to Otunbayeva in the temporary government that replaced Bakiyev, as well as the Ata Meken party led by Omurbek Tekebayev. Critics fear the vote could trigger more violence as rival factions struggle for power.