New Delhi: Counting is on in Pakistan, where elections for its national and provincial assemblies were held on Monday.
Early trends in Pakistan’s vote-count show that so far there is no clear winner, though former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's party appears to have taken a narrow lead, according to preliminary results.
While the Election Commission is yet to officially announce the turnout or any of the results, the initial trends do not augur well for Musharraf.
What has, however, emerged is that the ruling PML-Q, which backs Musharraf, seems to be the clear loser.
League no longer beleaguered
As was expected, the PML-N and PPP have shown leads in Punjab and Sindh – the native provinces of the parties’ leaders, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto.
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's party has shown as results from Monday's balloting flowed in.
Sharif's PML-N has won 62 seats, against 68 for the PPP. The PML-Q is a distant third with 27 seats and independents have claimed 22 seats so far.
Till Monday night, the vote count had gone in the PML-N's favour at 35 seats to the PPP's 30. Sharif told an Indian TV channel that he was happy with the election trends.
Ringing out the old
PML-Q stalwarts, including party chief and former Prime Minister Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain, lost his seat in Gujarat to the PPP’s Ahmed Mukhtar.
Musharraf’s close confidante and former Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, lost from both his constituencies, one of which was considered a key constituency, in Rawalpindi. Ahmed has been a seven-time winner from his constituency and had never lost despite aligning himself with different political parties in the past. He was defeated by PML-N’s Senior VP, Javed Hashmi.
Former Education Minister, Zubaida Jalal, who was a part of Musharraf’s cabinet, was also declared defeated, according to unofficial results reported by Pakistan’s TV channels.
Former Chief Minister of Punjab, Chuadhry Pervaiz Elahi has also lost PML-Q a seat from Bahawalpur.
Results for the other seats are still awaited, but if the current trend continues, Nawaz Sharif may well upset calculations that the PPP would emerge the biggest party on the strength of the sympathy vote.
Easy-going
Karachi-based Muttahida Quami Movement, which is aligned with Musharraf, has indicated its readiness to extend backing to either the PPP or the PML. According to recent data, it is faring well in Karachi and leading in 16 seats.
"We have got the biggest number of votes in Pakistan, that is, 1,84,000, so that boost and confidence will help us perform better,” stated MQM leader, Haider Abbas Rizvi. “We are basically a democratic, peace-loving party and we are open to all political parties for dialogue for whatever reason,” he explained.
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PPP’S Rig-marole
Meanwhile, the PPP, which had been the most vocal in declaring that the elections were already massively rigged, has had a charge levelled against it for the same practice by none other than their beloved late party leader’s niece.
Benazir’s niece Fatima Bhutto has accused her late aunt's party of carrying out massive rigging in some polling stations in Benazir's hometown, Larkana, in Sindh province.
Fatima, the daughter of late Mir Murtaza Bhutto – brother of Benazir, had forced the closure of voting for around two hours at a polling station in Larkana over the alleged rigging by Pakistan People's Party (PPP).
Waving the voters' list, Fatima had claimed that most of the names did not have their national identity card numbers on the list and this was nothing but "plain rigging".
Fatima claimed the PPP was trying to ride on a wave of sympathy following the killing of Benazir and was not following election rules.
Keeping promises
President Pervez Musharraf, meanwhile, has taken in the intial results stoically and has said he is happy with the process.
“I had promised the people that the elections will be held on time, will be free, fair, peaceful and transparent. I am happy that I have lived up to that promise,” he said.
Pakistan’s military spokesperson, Rashid Qureshi has said that the post-election transfer of power will be a peaceful process.
“Whichever party comes to power, the President will work with that government,” he said.
Musharraf corroborated this and said he was willing to extend his co-operation to the future Prime Minister and said he would be happy to work with them.
"Whoever becomes Prime Minister, I would like to cooperate with them fully and work with them in a reconciliatory mode,” he said.
Adding that it was not in the best interests of Pakistan to have a confrontation, Musharraf said, “We should finish this and work toward conciliatory politics, and this is what the situation is at the moment and the situation requires this. Whichever party wins, whoever becomes Prime Minister, whoever becomes a Chief Minister, I congratulate them and I will fully cooperate with them, in whatever role I have."
The February 18 general elections had seen one of the lowest voter turn-outs in a country where the turn-outs have not been very high, to begin with.
Only an estimated 35-40 per cent of the 80 million registered voters exercised their franchise, amid fears of violence and suicide attacks, which have been plaguing the country since months. Many incidents of violence and fraudulent voting were reported from across Pakistan on Monday.
Polling was held in Pakistan's four provinces of Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan and North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and seven restive tribal agencies bordering Afghanistan to choose 272 members of the National Assembly or lower house of Parliament and 728 members of provincial assemblies for a five-year term.
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