Winners Uncertain as Clashes Mar Pakistan Vote

A polling place in Lahore, Pakistan, on Monday. (Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)
LAHORE, Pakistan. Feb. 19th. (NY Times) — Fearful of violence and deterred by confusion at polling stations, Pakistanis voted Monday in parliamentary elections that may fail to produce clear winners and could result in protracted postelection political skirmishing. A number of clashes among polling officials and voters resulted in 10 people being killed and 70 wounded, according to Pakistani television channels. Suppressed by fears of violence and vote rigging, turnout was low, which was expected to favor President Pevez Musharraf and the faction of the party that supports him, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q. Within hours of the polls closing, however, several major defeats were reported for Mr. Musharraf’s party, which some of his party workers took as a harbinger of bad news to come. Though no official results were yet announced, those parliamentary seats appeared to go instead to the Pakistan Muslim League-N, the opposition faction of the same party, which supports the president’s main rival, the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. By early Monday night, crowds of Sharif supporters had already begun celebrating as they paraded through the streets of Rawalpindi, the garrison town just outside the capital, Islamabad. Riding on motorbikes and clinging onto the back of minivans, they played music and waved green flags of Mr. Sharif’s party decorated with the party symbol, a tiger. “The tiger has come!” shouted one man on a motorbike making a victory sign. “Long live Nawaz!”

At stake in the election is the question of what kind of elected government will emerge in Pakistan after eight years of military rule under President Musharraf. Mr. Musharraf, who stepped down as army chief last November after being re-elected to another five-year term, has seen his popularity plummet as the country has faced a determined insurgency by the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and a deteriorating economy. Nonetheless, the opposition was handicapped by restrictions placed on campaigning after the assassination late last year of the head of the other main opposition party, the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. In the early going, at least, the opposition appeared to be overcoming the obstacles. Nosheen Saeed, information secretary of the women’s wing of Mr. Musharraf’s party, was watching results come in at the Pakistan Muslim League-Q party headquarters in the capital. She conceded the early losses. “Some big guns are going to lose,” she said. While the rural vote, which is slower to come in, was expected to favor the president’s party, she nevertheless conceded that the “Q” league appeared to have lost the two seats in the capital, and several seats in Rawalpindi, she said. Two former ministers were among the losers. She put it down to a large protest vote. “Whoever is the last government is unpopular,” she said. The former Minister of Railways and a close friend of President Musharraf, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, conceded defeat to his party members in the two constituencies he was contesting in his home town of Rawalpindi, the teeming old city that adjoins the capital.

The chief returns officer in one of the constituencies, Shaukat Mehmood, said that 75 percent of the votes had been counted, and Hanif Abbasi, the candidate for Mr. Sharif’s party, was ahead. At Mr. Rashid’s headquarters, his supporters sat gloomily in chairs under an awning, listening to the cheers of their opponents. “Q is finished,” said Tahir Khan, 21, one of the party workers. They said Mr. Ahmed was popular but had suffered from a resounding protest vote against Mr. Musharraf and his governing faction. The shift against Mr. Musharraf’s faction came despite the low turnout and other modest irregularities. In the North-West Frontier Province, which abuts the lawless tribal areas, it was only 20 percent, according to election officials. In Peshawar, the provincial capital, Islamic militants intimidated many women enough to keep them from voting. In Lahore, the political capital of Punjab Province, lines were thin, and many voters complained they could not find their names on the voting lists. Despite the reports of some violence, election officials said that nationwide voting had been relatively calm compared with past elections. “We had more violence in one by-election in Karachi last year than across the country today,” said Staffan Darnolf, the country director for I.F.E.S. (formerly the International Foundation for Election Systems), a nonpartisan group based in the United States that has been advising Pakistan for more than a year on election procedures. Nervousness about suicide bombers was most palpable in Peshawar. “We were thinking of not coming; people are afraid because of bombs and suicide bombers,” said Huma Shaqwell, 22, a college student. Heavily armed police were posted at many polling stations, and the army deployed more than 80,000 soldiers to keep law and order. But hot tempers and deep suspicions about vote rigging created a tense election day, reflected in some places by the temporary closings of polling stations to restore calm.

The voting got off to a poor start in Punjab, the most important province, with 148 of the 272 contested parliamentary seats. On election eve, a Pakistan Muslim League-N candidate for the provincial assembly, Chaudhry Asif Ashraf, was shot to death, and three others injured when gunmen opened fire on his car. In Lahore, Fasih Ahmed, a businessman, said that by noon he had still not found his name on any list at the polling station. In the general atmosphere of insecurity in Pakistan, he was nervous, he said, standing in the open on the street as he waited to check voting lists. Early in the day, voting in Rawalpindi, the sprawling city adjacent to the capital, Islamabad, was sluggish. “Of course people are scared,” said Naheed Khan, a longtime assistant to Ms. Bhutto who was traveling with her in her car when she was killed. “The government has failed to control the law-and-order situation,” she said. Nevertheless, Ms. Bhutto’s party would prevail, she said. “If there is no government rigging, the Peoples Party will win because people want to come out in her memory,” she said, wiping away tears as she listened to Ms. Bhutto’s voice from a speech played over loudspeakers in the street. A number of those voting in Rawalpindi said they wanted change. “We know who is going to win — ‘Q’ is going to win, by cheating,” said Ammar Khalid, 23, an economics student, referring to the party backing Mr. Musharraf. “But we are still voting, for P.P.P. We want that there should not be a dictator. He is illegal and unconstitutional.”

Danish Sardar, 26, a businessman, voted for Mr. Sharif’s party, which has the symbol of a tiger on the ballot paper. “You will see the change,” he said. “The tiger will bring it.” In Gujrat, the stronghold of the Chaudhry clan, which includes the most powerful supporters of Mr. Musharraf, several polling stations were closed for periods of time because of arguments over voter lists. In many places in Gujrat, basic election commission rules were flouted as police officers stood inside polling stations, and many such stations looked like campaign headquarters for the incumbent candidate, Chaudhry Shujaat, who is also chairman of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q. Many green flags of his party decorated the entrances to polling places. Men in civilian clothes with armbands saying “special security” and long sticks patrolled many of the schools that were serving as voting stations. The men said they had been hired by the local government, which is controlled by a relative of Mr. Shujaat’s. A worker for Ahmad Mukhtar, the Pakistan Peoples Party challenger to Mr. Shujaat, complained that the procedures at one of the biggest polling stations were so chaotic that voters had been turned away. “By 11:30, only 70 votes have been cast, and 100 people have been turned away,” the worker, Shahida Naeem, who is the candidate’s sister, said as she argued with polling officials.

Groups of international observers, including three United States senators and a team of more than 100 observers from the European Union, watched the voting at various places across the country. One senator, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph Biden Jr., a Democrat from Delaware, said that if the vote went smoothly, he would argue for increased funding for economic development in Pakistan. “If the vote is viewed as credible, there should be a democratic dividend,” Mr. Biden said. He said he was prepared to recommend that the $500 million that Pakistan receives annually from the United States for development be tripled to $1.5 billion a year if the election was a fair. But, he said, if the poll is deeply flawed, he will seek to curtail Washington’s large military support of Pakistan, particularly expensive weapons.

For Washington and Pakistan to forge a successful strategy against the insurgency, Mr. Biden said, it is critical that the election result in a democratically elected government that can rally popular support against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In Hyderabad, a major city in Sindh Province and the stronghold of the Pakistan Peoples Party, army rangers arrested police officers who had invaded a polling station, according to Umair Chandio, a Peoples Party worker. The police had joined forces with workers of the Muttahida Quami Movement, a junior partner in the last Musharraf government, inside a polling station to stuff the ballot box with about 700 false ballot papers, Mr. Chandio said. When word spread that the police were cooperating in the rigging, a truckload of army rangers turned up at the polling station, arrested the police officers and confiscated the ballot papers, he said.
By Jane Perlez reported from Lahore, Pakistan, and Carlotta Gall from Islamabad. David Rohde contributed reporting from Peshawar, and Salman Masood from Rawalpindi.
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