Kyrgyzstan was heading for a coalition govt on Monday with several parties neck-and-neck in legislative elections held under a new constitution after unrest this year that left hundreds dead.

The pro-Moscow Ar-Namys party led by flamboyant former Prime Minister Felix Kulov proclaimed victory in the elections for first parliament with meaningful powers in ex-Soviet Central Asia.

But the country appeared set for coalition bartering between five main parties, in a scenario completely uncharacteristic of a region where strongman presidents and rubber-stamp parliaments are the rule.

The authorities hailed a robust turnout of 56.59 percent and the polls have so far defied warnings they could be scarred by a resurgence of this year’s political and ethnic violence.

“Today is a historic day for the Republic of Kyrgyzstan. The people will choose their fate, their future,” President Roza Otunbayeva, who championed the new political system, said as she cast her vote.

Kyrgyzstan created Central Asia’s first parliamentary democracy in a referendum earlier this year after a bloody April revolution, which toppled former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and deadly inter-ethnic clashes in June.

An exit poll published by the centrasia.ru regional news site, based on interviews with 1,306 voters, said Ar-Namys would reap 22.1 percent of the vote followed by the pro-government Social Democratic Party with 20.7 percent.

With just over 20 percent of voting precincts reporting so far, the nationalist Ata-Zhurt party was narrowly in the lead with some 10 percent of the vote, results published by the central election commission said.

However the pro-government Social Democratic Party was close behind on eight percent and the Republic Party polling seven percent, it said.

Ar-Namys had 6.8 percent of the vote while the pro-government Ata-Meken picked up 6.4 percent.

A minimum five percent of the vote is required in order to enter the Zhogorku Kenesh parliament.

Patterns are difficult to predict given that the most votes counted so far have been in the south of the country.

Kulov is expected to pick up votes later in the count when more votes come in from the north of Kyrgyzstan.

Confusing an already muddy picture, the central election commission gave the figures as a percentage of the total electorate and not of those who actually cast their ballots on the day.