(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - In a massive show of force during highly charged parliamentary elections, boycotted by opposition party Al-Wefaq, Bahraini police set up checkpoints and patrolled key roads.
The heaviest security was around Pearl Square in the capital Manama, which was once the hub for a popular uprising demanding the end of Al-Khalifa rule.
The area was ringed by barb wire and lines of armored police vehicles amid calls by anti-government factions to try to reclaim control of the site.
The voting in predominantly Shiite areas of the tiny Gulf Island appeared light Saturday. At one polling station in the Manama neighborhood of Sanabis that was the scene of a wave of clashes Friday, only 30 ballots have been cast in the first four hours of voting.
A polling station in Hamid Town, a mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhood of the capital, was somehow busier with a steady stream of people heading to vote. Voting started at 8:00 a.m. local time.
"This is a fake election. It's useless," said one man among the group, who only gave his first name, Ali, fearing retaliation by the authorities. "We don't have any stake in the political system any more after these killings in the past months."
The elections are for 18 seats left vacant in the 40-member parliament after MPs from Al-Wefaq quit in February in protest over a brutal crackdown by security forces on peaceful demonstrators.
However, in total 55 candidates will compete for 14 seats after four candidates were already declared winners afollowing their competition withdrew.
On Friday, scattered clashes broke out in mainly Shiite areas, with Bahrain's most senior Shiite cleric, Sheik Isa Qassim, denounced the government as leading a "fake democracy."
/106