ISLAMABAD, 1 January 2008 — The Election Commission yesterday said nationwide elections could be postponed for a few weeks, even as assassinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto’s party insisted they should be held on Jan. 8 as scheduled. The secretary of the commission, Kunwar Dilshad, told reporters: “We are seeking reports from four provinces on the law and order situation to see whether elections could be held peacefully. We can delay the elections for a few weeks but all depends on the state of preparedness in the four provinces of Sindh, Punjab, the North West Frontier Province and Balochistan.”
He said a final decision would be made today.
However, a senior government official predicted the elections would be postponed by “six weeks or so as the environment to hold free and fair elections is not conducive.”
He said logistics and preparations had been disrupted by unrest in Sindh province, the heartland of the Bhutto family and its supporters, while ballot printing in the country’s biggest city Karachi was behind schedule. “More than 40 offices of the election commission and its administrative offices have been damaged in Sindh,” the official said.
Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party and Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League both want the elections held on time, perhaps sensing major electoral gains are possible amid sympathy at Benazir’s death and accusations that political allies of President Pervez Musharraf were behind the killing. The government has rejected the charges.
Sharif also said yesterday that elections should be held on time, adding that Musharraf should be replaced by a national unity government.
“Nobody here wants the elections to be held after Jan. 8,” Sharif told a news conference in Lahore.
Sharif said the president was the root cause of the violence that gripped the country in the aftermath of Benazir’s murder on Thursday. “He is a one-man calamity and source of all problems,” Sharif said. “We demand that he resign immediately. This will end all chaos and unrest in the country.”
— Additional input from agencies
