Bahraini voters are heading to the polls in the country’s first parliamentary elections since the Arab Spring, amid calls for a boycott.<br /><br />Shia opposition groups set up protest polling stations to reject the vote.<br /><br />The main opposition group, Al Wefaq claims the parliament would not have enough power and said that voting districts favoured the kingdom’s Sunni Muslims.<br /><br />The group won 18 out of 40 parliamentary seats in the 2010 election but pulled out of parliament during a crackdown on largely Shi-ite Muslim protesters during the demonstrations in 2011.<br /><br />Reconciliation talks were revived earlier this year but broke down over the prosecution of opposition members.<br /><br />Despite the boycott, many polling stations were busy in the mostly Sunni Riffa district south of Manama.
