KARACHI/ISLAMABAD, 4 July — The Jamaat-e-Islami and the Pakistan People’s Party of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto yesterday claimed victory in the local bodies elections, and appeared set for a key contest for the post of mayor of Karachi, a post which had long been abolished but which has now been revived and upgraded by the military government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Conflicting claims were made about the turnout in the polling held on Monday. The Sindh province Governor Muhammad Mian Soomro, and his Cabinet minister Dewan Yusuf Farooq observed that over 35 percent voters had cast their votes, although they did concede that the turnout was low in two of the five sensitive districts of Karachi. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement, the party which has been winning every election in the urban areas of Sindh, since its birth in 1986, felt happy at the lack of public response.
The party’s founder leader Altaf Hussain issued a message of gratitude to the voters from his headquarters in England, thanking the people for boycotting the elections.
Pakistani elections authorities said the turnout was “encouraging” despite a boycott by the MQM in the country’s biggest city of Karachi. Voting was held on Monday in 29 districts for 3,570 seats under the military government’s promised transition to democracy.
A spokesman for the Chief Elections Commission said the polling was smooth, barring a few incidents at some places. “The response was encouraging and the overall turnout was more than 40 percent,” the spokesman Kanwar Dilshad said. He said final lists of successful candidates would be compiled shortly.
Amid allegations of massive rigging by Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League, the splinter group of his party is leading in the fourth phase of local government polls in the Punjab province. Polling was held in the latest phase of the grass-roots democracy program in parts of the Punjab, including the important cities of Lahore and Rawalpindi. Also struggling and joining PML in rigging allegations is the PPP.
According to initial unofficial results, the PML dissidents have secured more than 40 union council seats in Lahore. In Punjab, polling was held in the cities of Lahore, Kasur, Sheikhupura, Rawalpindi, Attock, Okara, Jhelum and Chakwal, marking an end to the long drawn-out process of local bodies election in the province.
