The city of Sulaimaniyah where Hassan cast his ballot in Iraq's general election on Sunday has long been a bastion of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the former rebel faction of Iraq's current President Jalal Talabani.

But the Goran party, whose name means "change" in Kurdish, is challenging its long grip on power with a list of candidates made up largely of PUK defectors.

The 42-year-old mechanic's reticence about revealing who he voted for was fuelled by a series of clashes between Goran supporters and those of the PUK in the run-up to polling day.

Only on Friday, five people were wounded in a gunfight between supporters of the two parties.

"They (the PUK) have done nothing for me," said Hassan, who has struggled to find work in his chosen field since he graduated in 1991.

"Our money has been misused by the main parties," he said quietly, as he queued outside the classroom-turned-polling station in the east of the city to vote.

"Most of my friends want to vote for Goran also -- 98 percent of them want more transparency and openness here."

Goran is hoping to take the majority of Sulaimaniyah province's 17 seats in the Iraqi parliament and push the PUK into an embarrassing third place among Kurdish parties.

The other main former rebel faction -- the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of regional president Massud Barzani, which has its strongholds in Arbil and Dohuk provinces further north -- is widely expected to win the most seats of any Kurdish party.

There have been no credible opinion polls in the region, however, so it remains impossible to predict how each party will fare.

Dana Abdul Qader, a 27-year-old metal worker, explicitly said he would fear reprisals if he was to admit to local journalists that he voted for Goran.

"If the journalist told the authorities, maybe they would cut my father's pension," he said, standing outside a polling station in the low-income Kalawa district of Sulaimaniyah.

"The PUK don't do anything for us, only for themselves."

PUK supporters were highly visible and had no qualms about declaring their allegiance to a party which fought successive Baghdad governments for more than four decades and played a key role in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime.

"My grandfather and all my family took part in the revolution (in 1975) so I voted for the Kurdistania list and a PUK candidate," said Ali Ibrahim Rasheed, 69, referring to an uprising against the central government.

"They (the PUK) have made improvements in Sulaimaniyah and I'm hoping for more in the next four years."

Shadan Omer Mohammed, a 36-year-old housewife, voted for the PUK as she had seen a great deal of reconstruction in her neighbourhood of the city.

"There has been lots of change -- they have been successful and defended Kurdish rights," she said, dressed in bright green traditional Kurdish clothes, a common sight on polling day in the region.

Goran confounded expectations by winning 23.57 percent of the vote in local elections to the autonomous Kurdish region's parliament in July standing on an anti-corruption platform.

Sunday was the first time it had contested a national election.

The party's breakthrough last year means that for the first time Kurdish voters have a realistic alternative to the long dominant alliance of the PUK and KDP, which were again standing on a joint ticket in Sunday's election.

Not all Goran voters were afraid of speaking their mind, however.

Sarwar Hassan Diray, 45, came back from his home in Sweden, where he owns a restaurant, specifically to cast his ballot, something he described as akin to a "celebration".

"Yes, I voted for Goran," he said outside a voting station in central Sulaimaniyah.

"In fact, I wore this blue shirt to show my support for them," he added, referring to the bloc's blue flag with a lone candle in the middle.

As if to hammer home the point, he continued in English: "I don't care."