ISLAMABAD, 19 August 2005 — Seven people died and 82 others were injured in clashes between supporters of rival candidates in the first phase of municipal elections in Pakistan yesterday.
Polling took place in 53 districts.
Voters in large numbers went to the polls yesterday for the elections that are being seen as a test of President Pervez Musharraf’s fight against hard-liners and his commitment to women’s rights.
Polls later closed for the first phase in which around half of Pakistan’s 63 million-strong electorate was eligible to vote. The second phase is on Aug. 25.
Security was high with tens of thousands of troops and police guarding polling stations.
A homemade bomb exploded in Khuzdar, a town about 400 km south of Quetta, the capital of southwestern Balochistan province, local government administrator Amir Farooqi said. No one was injured.
No one claimed responsibility for the blast, which damaged a perimeter wall at a school that was being used as polling station, Farooqi said.
Rival supporters of opposing candidates also clashed across the country, leaving seven people dead and 82 others injured, police said. One man was shot to death in Multan, a main city in Punjab province, said Mohammed Riaz, an area police official.
Another person was killed in Gujranwala, a third man died in Balochistan, and another death was reported in Daska town in Punjab province. Three people were killed and 12 injured when gunmen opened fire on supporters of a candidate at Bannu, a town in northwestern Pakistan, said Abdi Ali, an area police official.
Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said despite the pockets of violence “the polls have largely been peaceful.”
In pre-election violence last week, an Islamic party activist was shot to death in Karachi and nine people were injured in a shootout between supporters of two rival candidates in Rawalpindi, a city near the capital Islamabad.
One of the injured later died, state media reported.
Dozens of people were killed or injured during the last municipal elections in Karachi four years ago. Islamists, who traditionally have won only a small share of the vote, are trying to seize seats at the expense of the pro-Musharraf ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid, and the two main secular opposition parties.
Officially, the elections for district councilors and mayors are being held on a non-party basis to avoid the political violence that has blighted Pakistan in the past, but in practice groups have been openly backing candidates.
Hard-liners have been enraged by Musharraf’s crackdown on religious extremism and madrasas in the wake of the July 7 London bombings.
Musharraf appealed to Pakistanis to reject “retrogressive elements politically and socially” in a speech to mark Independence Day on Sunday.
The polls are part of a reform plan devised by Musharraf to give more power to the grassroots after he took office in a bloodless coup in 1999.
Female candidates and voters defied efforts by an alliance of Islamic parties that rules ultra-conservative North West Frontier Province to ban them from taking part in the elections. Women make up nearly a fifth of the 114,000 candidates across the country.
Few incidents of intimidation or violence against women were reported. But staff at a women’s polling station in Sheikh Mohammadi, near the provincial capital Peshawar, said “not a single woman” had come to cast her vote.
An Election Commission official Kanwar Mohammed Dilshad said the commission has taken “stringent measures” to ensure the participation of women after reports that village elders in several deeply conservative districts in the North West Frontier province had decided to bar women from coming out of their homes to vote.
