Musharraf’s Coalition Claims Polls Win, Opposition Cries Foul

ISLAMABAD, August 27, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Pakistan's ruling coalition on Saturday, August 27, claimed victory in the second round of local polls, marred by violence, while the opposition cried foul, citing massive fraud.

"Like the first phase, we have also swept the second phase," Tariq Azim Khan, a spokesman for the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML), told Reuters.

The PML said candidates backed by the ruling coalition fared well in all four provinces including the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) ruled by an opposition Islamist alliance.

"We have maintained our majority in Punjab, which has been our stronghold, as well as in Sindh and Baluchistan," Khan said.

"We have done well even in NWFP, contrary to what has been said before the elections. Results in NWFP show people have rejected extremism."

The Election Commission said it was still counting ballots from Thursday's polls to elect councilors in more than 100 districts across the country.

An official announcement on winning candidates was expected late Saturday or Sunday.

President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in Washington's so-called war on terror who sharpened his criticism of Islamists ahead of the elections, has hailed the outcome of the poll.

"The outcome of the election, overall in the country, is a victory for the moderates, for the enlightened and a defeat for the extremists," he told a gathering in the southern city of Karachi on Friday, August 26.

The elections were officially held on a non-party basis but were keenly contested by political factions to consolidate their power bases ahead of general elections in 2007.

The four yearly polls were seen as a test of Musharraf's bid to sideline religious conservatives, and a yardstick of his popularity ahead of the national polls.

Rigged

But the opposition denounced the elections as rigged, saying fair and transparent polls were not possible under Musharraf's dictatorship.

"The results are totally managed, planned and rigged," Liaquat Baluch, deputy secretary-general of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) Islamist alliance said.

"It shows that free and fair elections are not possible in the presence of General Musharraf."

MMA won control of NWFP and shared power in Baluchistan, thanks in part to anti-American sentiment fuelled by the US-led war on neighboring Afghanistan in late 2001.

The Pakistan People's Party of the self-exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto also criticized the elections.

"This was the biggest poll fraud that has taken place in Pakistan's electoral history," PPP spokesman Raza Rabbani, the opposition leader in the upper house of parliament, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"The whole exercise lacked moral and political legitimacy."

The opposition repeated accusations of ballot box stuffing and other malpractices, while women in some tribal areas complained they were stopped from entering polling centers.

Information Minister Rashid, however, insisted that the polling was "free, fair and transparent" and called the opposition allegations a "cover up" of their defeat.

The polls were marred by violence amid reports that at least 29 people were killed during Thursday's voting, adding to the 16 killed a week before.

The elected councilors will vote themselves on September 29 for district and sub-district chiefs known as nazims, whose influence is expected to play a key role in campaigning for the general elections.

After seizing power in a bloodless coup in October 1999, General Musharraf won a controversial referendum in 2002 to become president for five years and was later endorsed by the parliament.

He is expected to stand for office in 2007 and he is widely expected to be voted in by the national and provincial assemblies that emerge from the general elections.

But analysts say it is yet to be seen how Musharraf will develop relations with the secular political forces like Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party.