KUWAIT CITY — It was a typical night on Democracy Street, a sandy boulevard flanked by garish neon, a dozen election tents and dinner buffets ranging from camel meat to lamb kebabs. Through it all, thousands of white-robed Kuwaitis wandered tent to tent in search of truth, a good meal and a taste of the real issues behind Monday's crucial legislative elections, the first real test of democracy in the land that half a million Americans fought to liberate 19 months ago.

On the surface, the carnival of democracy was vintage tribal politics, Kuwaiti-style.

The wealthy owner of the emirate's Ford dealership, a veteran of Kuwait's 1981 rubber-stamp National Assembly, held court in his air-conditioned, football-field-sized tent, slaughtering sheep out back for the dinner spread and doling out handshakes and the rhetoric of Kuwait's ruling monarchs. There was even a "clown" candidate down the street, who drew curious onlookers with such quips as: "OK, give women the right to vote, but make their voting age 45. No woman will admit she's over 45."

But elsewhere along a street that analysts here call a microcosm of Kuwait's emerging new democracy, extraordinary--almost revolutionary--things were happening:

An Islamic fundamentalist with engineering degrees from Southampton University in England and a Mercedes-Benz parked behind his tent lectured visitors on the urgent need to implement strict Islamic law in the emirate.

A few hundred yards away, a nuclear physicist with degrees from the University of Michigan sat barefoot and cross-legged, blasting Kuwait's government for running away from the invading Iraqi army 26 months ago, yet carefully warning against any radical shake-up of "the system"--the monarchy that runs the nation.

And a veteran pro-democracy opposition leader at a nearby tent was denouncing not only the mistakes of Kuwait's leaders but also the emirate's mainstream democracy movement, which abandoned him when he challenged its adherence to old, pan-Arabist and anti-American policies.

As this tiny, oil-rich emirate goes to the polls to elect a new, 50-man National Assembly on Monday for the first time since the U.S.-led allied coalition freed Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, there are clear signs that this has already been the most free, fair and enlightened political exercise in Kuwait's checkered march toward democracy.