INSIDE Bilawal House in tony Clifton, Pakistan People's Party activist Ajaz Durrani makes back-of the-envelope calculations, hoping the "sympathy" wave for Benazir Bhutto's death translates into votes. Outside the house, where Benazir lived most of her married life, burly policemen stand guard while Pakistani Rangers patrol the entire city. This sums up the mood and scene in Pakistan as it goes to the decisive "mother of all elections" tomorrow - the polls delayed by six weeks following Bhutto's assassination.
Security is on high alert as the country's 81 million voters - almost half of Pakistan's population - get ready to elect 342 people's representatives in the national assembly (the country's equivalent of Lok Sabha) and 728 members of provincial assemblies.
Forces are guarding every sensitive area and there's a curfew-like situation in Karachi, including in the otherwise-busy arterial Shahrah- e-Faisal Road.
Pakistan's Election Commission has identified some 15,000 sensitive booths. "The EC is expecting trouble more from the cities than the rural areas," an international election observer, who met Election Commission officials and was briefed on the arrangements, told The Indian Express.
The Pakistan government has clamped curfew in the northwest tribal town of Parchinar where a suicide attack is said to have killed 50 people at a PPP rally on Saturday.
Fear hangs heavy in the political atmosphere and the apprehension of violence is expected to affect voter turnout. Charges of rigging have already been flying thick and fast.
Bhutto's husband Asif Zardari of PPP and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan Muslim League (N) have warned President Musharraf that they will launch a movement if the polls are rigged.
They are also discussing the possibility of a "grand coalition".
The elections are being seen as a referendum on Musharraf's rule and his allies, the former ruling party PML-Q. The issues grappling Pakistan's elections are a combination of national as well as local factors - ranging from restoration of democracy, which includes a people's elected government, a strong judiciary and limited role of army at the national level, and the issue of rising prices of essential commodities like edible oil, flour, fuel and growing unemployment at the local level.
The rise in the number of terrorist attacks, including the one that killed Bhutto after her homecoming, has only added to the resentment against the government, widely seen as remote-controlled by Musharraf.
Recent opinion polls, including those done by internal as well as international pollsters and civil society groups, have also indicated that the present regime has become immensely unpopular. With Musharraf rubbishing these polls, rumours of rigging have doing the rounds from Islamabad to Karachi.
The government, on its part, says it has deployed 500,000 security personnel for voting day, including 81,000 troops. It pledged today that the polls would be peaceful and fair."The elections will be free, fair, transparent and peaceful. We will not let anyone succeed in disrupting the election process," Information Minister Nisar Memon told reporters in Islamabad.
He warned of a crackdown on protests after polling day. "If anyone wants to create disturbance after elections, we have security arrangements to deal with them," Memon said.
Not many believe him though. Said Samreen Noor who was in Karachi's KFC outlet: "I want to vote, but my family is worried that there might be violence."
Taxi driver Afroz Alam at Islamabad's airport shared the concern. "There is no guarantee that these suicide bombers won't attack polling stations. They can strike at will, how will the government protect us now when it has failed in the past," he said.
But Kamran Sheikh, 32, an investment banker
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Labels: Fear, Nawaz Sharif, Pak polls, PPP sympathy vote, Suicide bombings
