By NNN-Xinhua
Rawalpindi : Voters in this northern Pakistani city started to cast their votes at 8 a.m. local time (0300 GMT) Monday for elections of four Provincial Assemblies and the National Assembly amid tight security.
“We are having only a few voters coming to this station in the first hour of voting,” said Muhammad Babar Afridi, principal of Rawalpindi’s Progressive Model College which hosts the constituency’s polling station for women.
Voters in Pakistan are divided by gender and the polling station for men is around 500 meters away.
Afridi said many qualified voters didn’t show up for safety concerns. He said turnout at this constituency was only around 43 percent in last election in 2002. However, he was expecting more people to come in the afternoon.
The election has been postponed for six weeks following the assassination of former opposition leader Benizar Bhutto in the Liaquat Bagh Park of this garrison city, which is about half an hour’s drive from capital Islamabad.
Tensions have been running high ahead of the election and several bomb attacks have rocked campaign rallies. The army said 81,000 troops would be deployed to the polling stations to maintain order, mostly in the northwest of the nation.
Main contenders in the election are the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) which supports President Pervez Musharaf, the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), currently co-chaired by Bhutto’s son Bilawal Zardari and her husband Asif Ali Zardari.
Observers here had predicted that sympathy for Bhutto might be able to garner large number of votes for the PPP, a party which has expressed willingness of forming an alliance with the other major opposition party the PML-N.
As the government has declared the election day a public holiday, streets here are empty and shops all closed.
About four policemen were present at each station here and the government had said troops would be deployed at polling stations in the more volatile regions such as the northwestern areas near the border with Afghanistan.
Voting is to end at 5 p.m. local time (1200 GMT) Monday and results are expected to come out in a progressive way after that.