KATHMANDU (AFP) — Results trickled in Friday as Nepal celebrated unexpectedly peaceful elections contested by Maoists and mainstream parties which are set to turn the Himalayan kingdom into a republic.
The vote on Thursday was a key plank of a peace deal with the Maoists to elect an assembly that will rewrite the constitution and is likely to abolish its 240-year-old besieged Hindu monarchy.
Despite fears polling would ignite violence, only sporadic incidents took place in a country recovering from a decade of civil war that left 13,000 dead.
United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon congratulated Nepal on the vote, which he said "took place in a generally orderly and peaceful atmosphere."
"Nepal stuns world, itself," read a banner headline in the English-language daily The Kathmandu Post.
"The Nepali people have once more proved doomsayers wrong," said the Nepali Times.
Still, at least 60 of the 21,000 polling stations will need to vote again, the Election Commission said late Friday.
"The number of re-polling stations will increase as we are still investigating the complaints received from our local election officers," commission spokesman Laxman Bhattarai told reporters.
Some villages reported their ballot boxes had been seized Friday en route to local headquarters for counting.
"Around 19 ballot boxes of several villages were torched and destroyed by the Maoists and Nepali Congress supporters," district official Drona Pokhrel told AFP from Dhading district, 30 kilometres (19 miles) west of Kathmandu.
But in spite of clashes, shootings and bombings in the weeks leading up to the polls, just 33 polling stations were forced to shut on voting day, the Election Commission said.
"This represents an historic achievement and is a tribute to the courage of the Nepali people and the conduct of the Election Commission," a US embassy statement said.
"In the days and weeks to come as the votes are counted, we urge patience and respect for the results."
Security had been tight and only isolated flare-ups, including three deaths in the ethnically tense south, were reported -- no worse than some other days.
If the count goes smoothly, the results for more than a third of the seats allocated under the constituency system were expected in a week, the Election Commission said.
The rest of the seats, allocated by proportional representation, will take longer. Complete results were due to take several weeks.
"Counting is very sensitive. We have to be very careful so there is no mistake," the election commission spokesman said.
The only one of Kathmandu's 10 constituencies to use electronic voting machines was also the first to declare. The winner was the candidate of the centrist Nepali Congress led by octogenarian Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala.
Maoist party chief Prachanda was leading in his constituency on Kathmandu's southern edge, local television reports said.
In what might become a symbolic victory in another part of the city, the Maoist candidate was also ahead of the leader of the rival Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist).
Some 60 percent of Nepal's 17.6 million voters turned out to elect the new 601-seat assembly that is slated to write a new constitution.
But strains could start to show after the count. The first challenge would be to get the major parties to accept the results, analysts say.
The Maoists, whose 2006 peace deal ended the bloody civil war and the king's attempt to seize absolute power, received 84 seats in the 330-seat caretaker assembly and five ministries in the aftermath of the peace deal, without ever fighting an election.
"The very first challenge will be to get to the end of the counting process and have the major parties accept the results," said Rhoderick Chalmers, Nepal's country director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
King Gyanendra, who ascended the throne in 2001 after the much-loved former monarch and most of his family were massacred by a drunk-and-drugged crown prince, will also be closely watched.
While widely unpopular for trying to seize total power, he can still count on support from sections of the army and from fundamentalists who see him as an incarnation of a Hindu god.
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