Excited Libyans vote hopefully - and remember sacrifices that made elections possible. - Telegraph In nearby Ajdabiya an anti-election protester was shot dead when he tried to steal a ballot box from a polling station. A local security official said by telephone that the protester was killed in an exchange of fire with local people trying to prevent the election from being disrupted. By nightfall it was the sole reported death connected with the poll. In the Benghazi incident, voters at the polling station drove off the attackers with their own weapons. According to the country's electoral commission, 94 per cent of polling places were open for business. At least for one day, nothing could be allowed to spoil the Libyan people's democratic party. It is a fair bet that no British citizen ever goes to vote carrying the national flag, complete with flagpole. They did here. At this polling station, in the Tripoli satellite town of Janzour, many had dressed up in their best clothes, and brought their equally dolled-up children. "Look at this," said one proud mother to a little daughter in a fairy outfit. This is what we will have all the time from now on. In Misurata, which survived three months' siege by Colonel Gaddafi's forces, the walls of the Martyrs' Museum are lined with the photos of those who will never get to vote. There are 1268 of them: some in focus, some out-of-focus, some truculent, some fearful, and then suddenly, joltingly, a short row of babies. "We thank the martyrs," said Abdulhakim Frefer, casting his vote at the polling station nearby. Because of them, we are having the feast today. There is no way these elections would be happening if it were not for Misurata. We held out. Outside on Tripoli Street, the front line remains in ruins: what used to be the main fruit and vegetable market still has a burned-out tank under its canopy. But there are signs of rebirth. A vast and flashy new furniture shop has just opened. The sales assistant, Sabah abu Suena, isn't planning to vote: he's too busy, he says. The Libyans with me bridle, but it might actually be a good sign if someone can afford not to be interested in politics. At the Martyrs' Museum, most of the women martyrs have their faces blanked out - at the request of their families, the curator insists. But at the polling stations, thrilled women seemed far more excited than the men. "In the Gaddafi era, women were absent from the scene," said a Misurata voter, Najimiya Noujrouk. This makes me feel worth more as a person, and it's a beautiful feeling. As I was coming from my home, I was saying out loud, God is great, God is great. Nothing is ever quite that simple, of course. Down the road from the happy scenes in Janzour was a place that cast a much darker light on Misurata's fighting spirit, and set a much stiffer test of Libyan democracy. The town's old naval academy has become a refugee camp for Libya's ethnically cleansed: people from what used to be a town called Tawargha, accused, often falsely, of "collaboration" with Gaddafi during the revolution. During the siege, Tawargha and Misurata were on opposite sides of the front line; regime forces used Tawargha as a base. After Gaddafi's defeat, as The Sunday Telegraph revealed last year, the Misurata Brigade had its revenge: all 30,000 of the town's people were expelled, many at a few minutes' notice, from their homes. Those houses have now largely been demolished, the wells poisoned and blocked, the town's very name erased from the road signs (they call it "New Misurata" now). "Life here is complete misery," says Ahmed Mohammed, one of the Tawarghans at the refugee camp. They live 14 to a room, men and women mixed together, subject to continued reprisals by the Misurata Brigade. In February, gunmen from the brigade invaded the compound, surrounding the buildings with armoured cars and killing seven people. "I haven't been outside the camp for seven months," says Othman Omar, another Tawarghan refugee. Yet there was a polling station in the refugee camp yesterday. And what's more, it was busy. Though the mood is far from celebratory, and though they have every reason to fear and distrust the "new Libya," the Tawarghans are giving this election a go. This is part of our participation in the revolution. Strong government, in fact, turned out to be the main demand of most voters we spoke to yesterday. In its absence, Libya is run by a collection of regional militias - Misurata's only the most powerful and self-confident - who derive considerable authority and prestige, not to mention arrogance, from their leadership roles in the revolution. Critics of the Misurata Brigade, the Zintan Brigade and the others tend to get visits: beatings and warnings if they are lucky, murder or abduction if they are not, and the authorities can do little or nothing. Whether the elections can deliver strong government is another matter. In the short run, they may bring only confusion. Just 80 of the 200 seats in the new general national council go to parties: the rest are reserved for a constellation of independents. All the parties and candidates sound alike: the secular-minded ones stress their commitment to Islam, and the Islamist ones are at pains to emphasise how moderate they are. The streets are festooned with posters all right, but the slogans tend to be vague. "Libya for all and with all," says one. "Libyan first, then first," says another, even more mystifyingly. In the absence of strong politics, Libya may be turning even closer to Islam. In recent weeks, a new organisation has emerged under the Ministry of Culture, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. In liberal circles, the name-share with Saudi Arabia's feared religious enforcers has caused shivers of alarm. Libya's Grand Mufti, Sheikh Sadik al-Ghariani, said recently that the new body's purpose was to "minimise corruption and evil, such as illegal and corrupt relationships on beaches, roads and public parks and the spread of alcohol and cannabis." Yet looking at Libya through the standard Western template of secularism versus political Islam may also be a mistake. It is extremely devout, but not in a political way. By comparison with almost any other Middle Eastern country, the years of Gaddafi have left Libya politically almost a blank space. Back in the centre of Tripoli, Gaddafi's old leadership compound at Bab al-Aziziya is a blank space of a different kind - a mile-square heap of rubble, the blast walls toppled, every last gilt-edged doorknob hauled away for sale. Bizarrely, in some of the ruined buildings, the homeless of Tripoli have set up residence - and they too are excited about the election. "You'd never even go near this place under the regime," said Tabet Abdolrahman, a self-employed welder, who has done rather nicely for himself in a former regime guardhouse. Never in a million years did I imagine I'd end up living in Gaddafi's compound because I couldn't afford the rent anywhere else. Life has got more difficult economically since the revolution, but I have real hope that these elections will change things. That hope was everywhere on election day, even in people who should rationally be feeling despair. Whoever they elect will have a hard task to fulfil such hopes.