Supporters of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto celebrate primary results for Pakistan's general elections in front of her residence in Karachi February 18, 2008. Counting began on Monday after an election in Pakistan which was far less violent than feared, although it could result in a parliament set on driving U.S. ally President Pervez Musharraf from power. REUTERS/Zahid HusseinBy Khalid Qayum and James Rupert
Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan's opposition parties were poised to win parliamentary elections as voters sought an end to President Pervez Musharraf's eight years of military rule.
``It seems, according to predictions, that the opposition has won,'' Tariq Azeem, a spokesman for the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-i-Azam said in a telephone interview from the capital, Islamabad.
Early results from the 64,000 polling booths showed gains for the late Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party and former prime minister Mohammad Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League. A two-thirds majority would give the opposition the mandate to press Musharraf to reverse constitutional changes that have kept him in power since a 1999 military coup.
``Going by the trend the opposition parties will win, if they don't sweep they will at least get the majority,'' Talat Masood, former general and a political and defense analyst, said in a telephone interview from Islamabad. ``Definitely, the results are being delayed and maybe the authorities will try to take advantage of the night but I doubt very much they will be able to manipulate.''
With 111 of 272 constituencies reporting, Bhutto's party won 33 seats in the National Assembly, with Sharif's group securing 38, according to the private GEO Television's Web site. The Pro-Musharraf party won in 13 constituencies, it said. The official Election Commission tally showed Bhutto's party with 12 seats, Sharif's party with 13 seats and Musharraf's backers with four victories, out of 41 parliamentary seats.
Terror Front
The election will also re-shape a key front in the U.S.-led war on terror by sweeping away the Islamic government of the North-West Frontier Province, which borders Afghanistan. With almost half of the province's voting results announced early today, secular, anti-Taliban parties were winning about two- thirds of the legislative seats and are poised to form the next provincial government.
``A secular government is a very, very positive development,'' said Hassan Abbas, a researcher on political and security issues at Harvard University. ``There is now a much better opportunity'' to oppose the growing influence and violence of the Taliban and allied militant groups in the province, Abbas said.
Even a landslide opposition victory nationwide won't necessarily dislodge the president. Musharraf, 64, has the constitutional authority to dissolve parliament. That power and concerns about rigged balloting lead some analysts to predict that opposition clout will remain limited.
Losing Support
Musharraf has lost support since March, when he began trying to oust the independent-minded Supreme Court chief justice, and opposition increased in November when he imposed emergency rule to sack dozens of top judges who refused to acknowledge his supreme authority. His popularity also has been further undercut by former prime minister Bhutto's Dec. 27 assassination while campaigning.
Exit polls from Punjab province, which provides more than half of the 272 directly elected seats in parliament, showed key allies of Musharraf losing in urban areas.
Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, who served in Musharraf's cabinet, lost in both constituencies where he ran in the city of Rawalpindi, Dawn News reported. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, president of the Muslim League-Quaid-i-Azam, lost in his hometown of Gujrat, according to Dawn and another private channel, Geo News.
Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, who was named as candidate for Prime Minister by the party, lost two seats but won in the city of Lahore, according to the Election Commission.
`Anti-Incumbency Swing'
``There has been an anti-incumbency swing, and it looks like it's of a big magnitude for people like this to fall,'' said Haris Gazdar, a Pakistani political and economic researcher at the London School of Economics.
Musharraf, 64, told state-run Pakistan Television the elections were ``free, fair and transparent'' after he deployed more than 80,000 troops to curb violence in the nuclear-armed nation. The election commission announced the first results 2 1/2 hours later than scheduled with victories for independent candidates in two tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.
``The biggest gain is by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (of Nawaz Sharif) and it will be the biggest upset,'' said former ruling party spokesman Azeem. ``Everyone believed the Pakistan Peoples Party will sweep the election but even in straight fight between Sharif's party and the PPP, Sharif's party has been ahead.''
Leaders Off Ballot
Neither Sharif nor the leader of Bhutto's party, her husband Asif Ali Zardari, 51, were on the ballot. Amin Fahim, the PPP's vice chairman, is the likely choice as the next prime minister.
Fahim, 68, is a longtime parliamentarian who led the party for seven years while Bhutto was in exile. Pakistan's parliament elects the prime minister, who is typically the leader of the party or coalition with the most seats. Since Musharraf's 1999 coup, the presidency has held executive power, while the prime minister oversees domestic policy in consultation with the president.
``We won't comment on the results or trend at the moment but we knew our position will be very good,'' said Sherry Rehman, spokeswoman for Pakistan Peoples Party.
Party activists gathered across rural Sindh to celebrate the party's victory. Hundreds of supporters waved the red, green and black striped party flag and danced to pro-Bhutto songs, Dawn News reported.
Musharraf's Partner
Altaf Hussain, the leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, which traditionally wins in Karachi and other parts of urban Sindh, said his party is willing to work with Bhutto's and Sharif's parties, GEO reported. Hussain's party was a coalition member of Musharraf's government.
Musharraf emphasized his economic record to attract voters to parties that support him. The country's gross domestic product has doubled to $146 billion since 1999 with average annual growth of 7.5 percent in the past four years.
The opposition parties say the benefits of economic growth haven't trickled down to the general public, which faces wheat- flour, electricity and gas shortages amid inflation.
An estimated 81 million Pakistanis were registered to vote for 272 lawmakers in the 342-member parliament. The remaining 70 seats will be filled by women and minorities picked by legislators later. In five elections since 1988, voter turnout has been between 30 and 40 percent.
Religious Party Routed
The turbulent North-West Frontier Province, dominated by the Pashtun ethnic group, turned sharply away from the main Islamic religious party, which has given support both to the Taliban and to President Musharraf.
The Jamaat-i-Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) formed the core of a pro- Taliban coalition that won control of the provincial government in the last elections in 2002. That coalition splintered in recent months and the JUI is being swept aside in key races by an anti-Taliban group, the Awami National Party (ANP), according to official results compiled from local polling places by the private TV networks.
The ANP had won 19 seats by early Tuesday, according to the independent Dawn News TV channel. The JUI's coalition, called the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, early today held only seven of the 46 seats that had been declared. In the adjacent federally administered tribal zone, which is the main stronghold of the Taliban, seven of 10 seats had been won by independents rather than the coalition.
Pashtun Homeland
Harvard's Abbas said the new secular provincial government will be weak in some ways and will be undermined by Pakistani or U.S. attacks on al-Qaeda targets in the Pashtun zone that cause civilian casualties.
The mountainous province of 20 million people is a big part at of the ethnic Pashtun tribal homeland that straddles the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Along with an adjacent, semi- autonomous tribal zone, the province has been a key sanctuary and recruiting ground for the Taliban, whose influence and violence have spread in the past year.
Whatever the election result, Pakistan's military will continue to be a major power center, as it has for much of the nation's 60-year history. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S., Musharraf has won praise from President George W. Bush for using the army to fight terrorists.
Musharraf, who seized power as army chief, appointed Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, 52, in November to succeed him as army leader. Kayani, who received military training in the U.S., is Pakistan's former spy chief and was an aide to Bhutto when she was prime minister in the 1980s.
U.S. Aid
The U.S., which has pumped $10 billion into Pakistan since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with the aim of securing the country against al-Qaeda, is depending on the vote to further a transition to civilian government from Musharraf's military rule.
U.S. intelligence agencies are critical of Musharraf's efforts to control extremists and say al-Qaeda has established bases in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
The number of people killed in terrorist attacks and sectarian violence in Pakistan more than doubled last year to 2,116 from 967 in 2006, the Interior Ministry in Islamabad says.
``The overall security situation has been satisfactory as there are no reports of terrorist attacks in the country,'' ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said in a phone interview from Islamabad late yesterday.
To contact the reporters on this story: Khalid Qayum in Islamabad at kqayum@bloomberg.net ; James Rupert in Lahore, Pakistan, at jrupert3@bloomberg.net
``It seems, according to predictions, that the opposition has won,'' Tariq Azeem, a spokesman for the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-i-Azam said in a telephone interview from the capital, Islamabad.
Early results from the 64,000 polling booths showed gains for the late Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party and former prime minister Mohammad Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League. A two-thirds majority would give the opposition the mandate to press Musharraf to reverse constitutional changes that have kept him in power since a 1999 military coup.
``Going by the trend the opposition parties will win, if they don't sweep they will at least get the majority,'' Talat Masood, former general and a political and defense analyst, said in a telephone interview from Islamabad. ``Definitely, the results are being delayed and maybe the authorities will try to take advantage of the night but I doubt very much they will be able to manipulate.''
With 111 of 272 constituencies reporting, Bhutto's party won 33 seats in the National Assembly, with Sharif's group securing 38, according to the private GEO Television's Web site. The Pro-Musharraf party won in 13 constituencies, it said. The official Election Commission tally showed Bhutto's party with 12 seats, Sharif's party with 13 seats and Musharraf's backers with four victories, out of 41 parliamentary seats.
Terror Front
The election will also re-shape a key front in the U.S.-led war on terror by sweeping away the Islamic government of the North-West Frontier Province, which borders Afghanistan. With almost half of the province's voting results announced early today, secular, anti-Taliban parties were winning about two- thirds of the legislative seats and are poised to form the next provincial government.
``A secular government is a very, very positive development,'' said Hassan Abbas, a researcher on political and security issues at Harvard University. ``There is now a much better opportunity'' to oppose the growing influence and violence of the Taliban and allied militant groups in the province, Abbas said.
Even a landslide opposition victory nationwide won't necessarily dislodge the president. Musharraf, 64, has the constitutional authority to dissolve parliament. That power and concerns about rigged balloting lead some analysts to predict that opposition clout will remain limited.
Losing Support
Musharraf has lost support since March, when he began trying to oust the independent-minded Supreme Court chief justice, and opposition increased in November when he imposed emergency rule to sack dozens of top judges who refused to acknowledge his supreme authority. His popularity also has been further undercut by former prime minister Bhutto's Dec. 27 assassination while campaigning.
Exit polls from Punjab province, which provides more than half of the 272 directly elected seats in parliament, showed key allies of Musharraf losing in urban areas.
Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, who served in Musharraf's cabinet, lost in both constituencies where he ran in the city of Rawalpindi, Dawn News reported. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, president of the Muslim League-Quaid-i-Azam, lost in his hometown of Gujrat, according to Dawn and another private channel, Geo News.
Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, who was named as candidate for Prime Minister by the party, lost two seats but won in the city of Lahore, according to the Election Commission.
`Anti-Incumbency Swing'
``There has been an anti-incumbency swing, and it looks like it's of a big magnitude for people like this to fall,'' said Haris Gazdar, a Pakistani political and economic researcher at the London School of Economics.
Musharraf, 64, told state-run Pakistan Television the elections were ``free, fair and transparent'' after he deployed more than 80,000 troops to curb violence in the nuclear-armed nation. The election commission announced the first results 2 1/2 hours later than scheduled with victories for independent candidates in two tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.
``The biggest gain is by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (of Nawaz Sharif) and it will be the biggest upset,'' said former ruling party spokesman Azeem. ``Everyone believed the Pakistan Peoples Party will sweep the election but even in straight fight between Sharif's party and the PPP, Sharif's party has been ahead.''
Leaders Off Ballot
Neither Sharif nor the leader of Bhutto's party, her husband Asif Ali Zardari, 51, were on the ballot. Amin Fahim, the PPP's vice chairman, is the likely choice as the next prime minister.
Fahim, 68, is a longtime parliamentarian who led the party for seven years while Bhutto was in exile. Pakistan's parliament elects the prime minister, who is typically the leader of the party or coalition with the most seats. Since Musharraf's 1999 coup, the presidency has held executive power, while the prime minister oversees domestic policy in consultation with the president.
``We won't comment on the results or trend at the moment but we knew our position will be very good,'' said Sherry Rehman, spokeswoman for Pakistan Peoples Party.
Party activists gathered across rural Sindh to celebrate the party's victory. Hundreds of supporters waved the red, green and black striped party flag and danced to pro-Bhutto songs, Dawn News reported.
Musharraf's Partner
Altaf Hussain, the leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, which traditionally wins in Karachi and other parts of urban Sindh, said his party is willing to work with Bhutto's and Sharif's parties, GEO reported. Hussain's party was a coalition member of Musharraf's government.
Musharraf emphasized his economic record to attract voters to parties that support him. The country's gross domestic product has doubled to $146 billion since 1999 with average annual growth of 7.5 percent in the past four years.
The opposition parties say the benefits of economic growth haven't trickled down to the general public, which faces wheat- flour, electricity and gas shortages amid inflation.
An estimated 81 million Pakistanis were registered to vote for 272 lawmakers in the 342-member parliament. The remaining 70 seats will be filled by women and minorities picked by legislators later. In five elections since 1988, voter turnout has been between 30 and 40 percent.
Religious Party Routed
The turbulent North-West Frontier Province, dominated by the Pashtun ethnic group, turned sharply away from the main Islamic religious party, which has given support both to the Taliban and to President Musharraf.
The Jamaat-i-Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) formed the core of a pro- Taliban coalition that won control of the provincial government in the last elections in 2002. That coalition splintered in recent months and the JUI is being swept aside in key races by an anti-Taliban group, the Awami National Party (ANP), according to official results compiled from local polling places by the private TV networks.
The ANP had won 19 seats by early Tuesday, according to the independent Dawn News TV channel. The JUI's coalition, called the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, early today held only seven of the 46 seats that had been declared. In the adjacent federally administered tribal zone, which is the main stronghold of the Taliban, seven of 10 seats had been won by independents rather than the coalition.
Pashtun Homeland
Harvard's Abbas said the new secular provincial government will be weak in some ways and will be undermined by Pakistani or U.S. attacks on al-Qaeda targets in the Pashtun zone that cause civilian casualties.
The mountainous province of 20 million people is a big part at of the ethnic Pashtun tribal homeland that straddles the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Along with an adjacent, semi- autonomous tribal zone, the province has been a key sanctuary and recruiting ground for the Taliban, whose influence and violence have spread in the past year.
Whatever the election result, Pakistan's military will continue to be a major power center, as it has for much of the nation's 60-year history. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S., Musharraf has won praise from President George W. Bush for using the army to fight terrorists.
Musharraf, who seized power as army chief, appointed Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, 52, in November to succeed him as army leader. Kayani, who received military training in the U.S., is Pakistan's former spy chief and was an aide to Bhutto when she was prime minister in the 1980s.
U.S. Aid
The U.S., which has pumped $10 billion into Pakistan since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with the aim of securing the country against al-Qaeda, is depending on the vote to further a transition to civilian government from Musharraf's military rule.
U.S. intelligence agencies are critical of Musharraf's efforts to control extremists and say al-Qaeda has established bases in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.
The number of people killed in terrorist attacks and sectarian violence in Pakistan more than doubled last year to 2,116 from 967 in 2006, the Interior Ministry in Islamabad says.
``The overall security situation has been satisfactory as there are no reports of terrorist attacks in the country,'' ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said in a phone interview from Islamabad late yesterday.
To contact the reporters on this story: Khalid Qayum in Islamabad at kqayum@bloomberg.net ; James Rupert in Lahore, Pakistan, at jrupert3@bloomberg.net
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