Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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 Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 6:10 pm Post subject: Pakistan: Voters Reject Musharraf and the Mullahs |
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Pakistan: Voters Reject Musharraf and the Mullahs
Stratfor Today � February 19, 2008 | 0009 GMT
Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
Pakistani election workers count votes in PeshawarSummary
The allies of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf have fared poorly in the South Asian country�s Feb. 18 parliamentary elections. The election results mean Musharraf has become a lame-duck president, that the successes by Islamists in Pakistan�s previous round of parliamentary elections were a fluke and that the current round of elections were reasonably free and fair.
Analysis
The Pakistan People�s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) won the majority of the 268 National Assembly seats contested in Pakistan�s Feb. 18 election, Pakistan�s AAJ TV projected the same day. The PPP is estimated to have won 110 seats, the PML-N 100 seats and the pro-government Pakistan Muslim League (PML) 20 to 30 seats. The remaining 20 to 30 seats will go to the Awami National Party, the Muttahida Quami Movement and other smaller parties and independents. Meanwhile, GEO TV is describing the allies of President Pervez Musharraf as having been routed.
Though these are not the official results, by all accounts it appears Musharraf�s allies have indeed been routed. The president�s allies in the PML are not the only casualties in the legislative polls. The Islamist Mutahiddah Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), lead by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, also has experienced a major setback in the current election. The MMA ruled the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), shared a coalition government with the PML in Balochistan province and controlled nearly 60 seats in the last national parliament.
Many senior politicians allied with Musharraf lost in their hometown constituencies. These include PML chief Chaudhry Shujat Hussain, former Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, former Parliament Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain, former Information Minister Sheikh Rashid, former Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Niazi, former Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri and former Defense Minister Rao Sikander Iqbal, among several other party stalwarts.
In the provincial legislatures, the secular Pashtun nationalist Awami National Party is leading in the NWFP, the PML-N is ahead in Punjab province and the PPP leads in Sindh province, with Balochistan as the only province where the pro-Musharraf PML seems to be faring well.
The disastrous outcome for Musharraf�s allies occurred against the backdrop of major international fears that the Musharraf government would engage in vote rigging to ensure that its allies won. It appears that Musharraf was no longer able to make use of the state machinery (especially the intelligence agencies) to rig the vote, however, now that he has stepped down from the position of army chief. Moreover, vote rigging in a tight race is one thing, but rigging an election in which Musharraf�s allies trailed badly is much less feasible. The PPP and the PML-N shared either first or second place in many constituencies in Punjab, a pro-government PML stronghold that accounts for the bulk of seats in the national parliament, which means successful rigging was not possible.
The Musharraf government thus made a major miscalculation as to how its candidates would fare. Musharraf has become a lame-duck president, the Islamist electoral rise in previous parliamentary elections seems to have been a fluke and the elections seem to have been decently free and fair. |
1) Pakistan is more democratic than Iran
2) Musharraf is far more liberal and tolerant than any mideast dictator |
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