By IANS
Islamabad : The seven-week delay in holding Pakistan’s general elections due to violence following former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination could see politicians shifting their loyalties.
“A major task for us in the intervening period will be to effectively stem large scale defections,” The News Thursday quoted a senior Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) leader as saying.
The PML-Q, also known as the “King’s Party” due to its allegiance to President Pervez Musharraf, had ruled the country till a caretaker government assumed office last week ahead of the elections originally slated for Jan 8.
Chief Election Commissioner Qazi Muhammad Farooq said Wednesday that large-scale rioting in the wake of Bhutto’s killing Dec 27 had upset poll preparations and made it impossible to hold the elections on Jan 8. They will now be held on Feb 18.
According to The News, the PML-Q leader “was perhaps aware of the fact that some of its ticket-holders were prone to switching sides because of the sympathy wave caused by Benazir’s assassination”.
The PML-Q has not faced any large-scale desertions so far. Most of those who have quit the party are those who have been denied tickets. However, that was the time when the top PML-Q leadership had tried to make everyone, including its ticket-holders, believe it would clinch a majority of seats in the Jan 8 elections and was likely to form governments at the federal and provincial levels.
“We have to be proactive because our apparent caving in has sent a negative signal to our candidates,” the PML-Q leader said.
According to him, top party leaders “had become aggressive and started countering the slanderous onslaught” of Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the PML-N of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif against the PML-Q.
“During the three-day mourning (following Bhutto’s death), we were deliberately not aggressive despite the fact that we were subjected to baseless allegations,” the PML-Q leader said.
The intense attack launched against the PML-Q by PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari at his maiden press conference had reversed the situation, he added.
Admitting that the situation had undergone a sea change following Bhutto’s murder and that the PPP’s public rating had improved, the PML-Q leader insisted that this was not to the extent where “our party feels threatened”.
“We can still stop the downslide by tackling the campaign against us prudently,” he said.
According to The News, among the three major parties, the PML-Q “has an edge by having most powerful nominees with wide influence in their respective constituencies and districts.” A majority of them are moneyed people, feudal lords, business tycoons or others having great local sway.
“Topping it all was the fact that the PML-Q had got enough time to prepare for the elections much before the poll schedule was actually unfolded. On the other hand, its chief opponents – the PPP and the PML-N – had not done proper spadework for the electoral exercise. In most cases, they had failed to catch hold of winning candidates,” the newspaper said.