Pakistanis Deal a Blow to Musharraf

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Pakistan Faces Crucial Election

Eight weeks after Benazir Bhutto was slain, Pakistan held parliamentary elections on Monday, Feb. 18, 2008. The final results, expected days later, could shepherd a troubled nation into a new era of civilian rule and gird it against the Islamic extremists suspected of her killing.

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But a majority of voters, it appeared, decided not to go to the polls at all. By 1 p.m., at one polling station in Lahore's densely populated Old City, only 250 out of 1,500 registered voters had cast their ballots. Similar low turnouts were reported at many other stations.

"This is due to the uncertain atmosphere, the threat of terrorism," said Mohammed Badwa, an economics professor who served as the manager of one polling station. "The procedure is transparent and orderly inside, but the people are very much afraid of violence outside."

Lahore has been at the epicenter of protests by Pakistan's lawyers, who took to the streets by the thousands in November following Musharraf's decision to fire the Supreme Court chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, and detain the president of the Supreme Court bar association, Aitzaz Ahsan, both of whom had been critical of the government.

Several opposition politicians and groups called for the chief justice's reinstatement. Most notable among them was Sharif. Although Sharif is not running for office, his stance on the judiciary appeared to garner the party widespread support at the polls.

"He espoused very clearly and very stridently the cause of the chief justice," said Ahsan, who spoke by phone from his home in Lahore. "This was an election about Pervez Musharraf. I think that had the Pakistan People's Party adopted the same position from the outset, I think it would have swept the polls, and the national grief with Bhutto's assassination would have translated into a strong position, and nothing would have stopped them."

Sherry Rehman, chief spokeswoman for the Pakistan People's Party, said that it was too early to predict the outcome and that Bhutto's party had a strong showing in several areas of the country, including the party's traditional stronghold of Sindh province, Bhutto's ancestral home. Rehman said the party had received hundreds of complaints from voters about rigging at the polls, adding that a delay in delivering ballots to officials charged with counting the vote was especially troubling.

"We're not getting the results. They have been delayed, which in Pakistan means they will be changed," Rehman said.

A Western election observer who spent the day touring polling stations near the northwestern city of Peshawar reported witnessing violence and irregularities. The observer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said problems were particularly rife at several women's polling stations.

"The most egregious irregularities we saw were at the women's polling stations. There were missing voters' lists, misuse of ballot boxes, intimidation of voters," the observer said. "These were in the most secure areas and more affluent areas. I mean, if this was happening here, I could just imagine how bad it must have been in some of the rural areas."

In Pakistan's restive tribal areas, local officials reported that nine security officials were believed to have been kidnapped in the town of Baka Khel in North Waziristan. Police launched a search for them, but there was no immediate word on their whereabouts.

Many polling stations across the northwest were all but deserted during the first half of the day. Problems were compounded as reports of violence around the country began to trickle in. Local news media and several local officials said three explosions occurred in the northwest Swat Valley. The once-serene valley has been roiled in the past year by dozens of skirmishes between Taliban fighters and government troops.

In the densely populated military enclave of Rawalpindi, the flow of voters at one polling station was snarled for more than an hour after election officials opened the polls late.