PAKISTAN:Pakistan's opposition parties were poised to sweep nationwide parliamentary elections as President Pervez Musharraf's supporters prepared to concede defeat. "It seems, according to predictions, that the opposition has won," said Tariq Azeem, a spokesman for the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League last night.
Early results from the 64,000 polling booths showed gains for the late Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party and former prime minister Mohammad Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League, according to three major private TV networks.
IGujrat, one of the most bitterly contested seats in the election, a team of beefy bodyguards in camouflage jackets and white basketball boots swarmed around Pakistan People's Party candidate Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar as he zipped between polling stations in the early hours of voting yesterday.
"People are scared," said Mr Mukhtar, who appeared tense. "But the immediate danger to me is that the Wajahat force will try to attack or humiliate me." The "Wajahat force" was not an obscure Islamist grouping but gunmen allied to his main rival.
Chaudhry Wajahat is a member of the Chaudhry family, a clan that runs Gujrat like a fiefdom. They also happen to be key allies of President Musharraf.
For the past five years the Chaudhries of Gujrat have dominated the Pakistan Muslim League, which gave Mr Musharraf, the soldier-president, a modicum of democratic respectability. Yesterday's vote was the party's greatest challenge. The polls indicated that its support was collapsing, along with that of Mr Musharraf, with its president, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, defeated in his seat in Punjab province by a rival from the Pakistan People's Party.
Mr Hussain, who suffered a stroke some years ago, relaxed at his hacienda-like home, watching the state broadcaster through a pair of Italian sunglasses. On the lawn outside, dozens of armed police lounged on the grass under giant posters of various Chaudhries. "No Fear" was written on their tracksuits.
The two men are old rivals. Mr Hussain and Mr Mukhtar have faced off in elections four times before. Mr Hussain won three times. He chuckled at his opponent's accusations of intimidation and rigging.
"You can go and ask anyone," he said. "The people in the rural areas support us. They know everything." The standoff mirrored a wider battle between Mr Musharraf and the opposition. And, as elsewhere, the posturing did not come to blows. Yesterday's vote may have been messy, small and uninspiring, but predictions of bloody mayhem were mercifully not realised.
Last night wire agencies reported about 11 deaths through the voting, including a candidate shot dead in Lahore hours before polls opened and a woman who died in a local dispute near Gujrat. Relatively speaking, this was good news. Over the previous week 100 people died in a spate of bombings in North West Frontier province. But the Islamists blamed for those attacks remained quiet yesterday.
However, the violence did take a toll. Voter turnout was low, probably less than the 45 per cent of 2002. In Gujrat only a trickle of voters turned up in the early hours. Those who made it said they worried about violence.
"We came together, just to be on the safe side," said Sher Muhammad Arshad, a photo shop owner and government supporter who arrived with his wife to vote in a city central polling station just after 9am.
But apathy also played a large role. After months of intrigues, assassinations and soaring food prices, voters are feeling crushed by the weight of their battered expectations. "The thing is that people just don't like the candidates. In fact they hate them," said Prof Muhammad Ilyas, the returning officer at a deserted polling station in Gujrat. With just two hours until his polling station closed, turnout had hit just 30 per cent. "The candidates never keep their promises. They are not people of their word. Everyone knows it," he said. Five policemen clustered around his table nodded silently.
That level of disillusionment will be a challenge for whoever forms the next government. It will be a particular worry for Musharraf, who appears more isolated than ever. Having promised "the mother of all elections" he sounded a more conciliatory mood after casting his vote in Rawalpindi, calling for "national reconciliation". Earlier he had offered to act as a "father figure" to the next president.
First, though, the results. Tracer bullet fire streaked across the Grand Trunk road that connects Gujrat to Lahore as the first results were declared and celebrating supporters opened fire. The celebrations may be the prelude to real aggression if the opposition claims the poll has been fixed.
Almost half a million police and soldiers were on standby as the constituencies started to declare; a good indication of the final result should be available by this morning.
The allegations were already being rehearsed. In Karianwala, 20 miles from Gujrat, a bitter row erupted. "It is all rigged!" declared a polling agent from Bhutto's party. "It's the fairest election ever!" shouted back a man from the government.
The harassed returning officer, Muhammad Akmal, ushered the Guardian away and into a room where officials were carefully counting 812 ballots. The polling agents, watching like hawks, declared themselves satisfied.
"It is truly free and fair. In the history of Karianwala, there has never been an election like this," said Akmal proudly. Today will tell if that holds true for the rest of Pakistan. -