By Muhammad Najeeb, IANS
Islamabad : It’s all quiet on the election front in Pakistan. Frank scepticism of the people, the mourning month of Muharram and the winter chill have ensured that campaigning has not picked up after being abruptly halted with the Dec 27 assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
The polls had earlier been scheduled for Jan 8 but were postponed to Feb 18 by the Election Commission, which cited the tenuous law and order situation and the fact that its offices in more than 13 districts were destroyed after the former prime minister’s killing.
Most parties have restricted their activities to drawing room or corner meetings with workers and leaders.
The security situation in the country and the question mark hanging over the elections is preventing people from attending public meetings. President Pervez Musharraf’s sincerity of intention in holding free and fair elections is also being doubted.
“I don’t think that elections will take place. If they can be postponed on the pretext of law and order it can be done again. Musharraf has already hinted at it,” Qayyum Khan, a political worker in Islamabad, told IANS.
In his address to the nation, Musharraf had said elections had been postponed because of the law and order situation. “The world is calling for free, fair and transparent elections but I would like to add one more word to; it we want free, fair, transparent and peaceful elections.
“Musharraf has already warned and made the elections conditional with peace… I believe this time he will take an excuse that since there is trouble in parts of Pakistan, we cannot hold elections,” said Hammad Raza, a student of Quaid-i-Azam University.
Both the mainstream opposition parties – Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) – have accused the government of indulging in pre-poll rigging.
But both are also gearing up for the election campaign saying they would be launching a full-fledged public campaign after the first 10 days of Muharram because of religious sensitivities.
“We still are going to elections despite the widespread rigging,” Sharif told journalists at his residence in Lahore.
PPP’s co-chairperson Asif Zardari said his party would launch a campaign after Bhutto’s ‘chehlum’ in early February.