Thursday, Oct 10, 2002
Thursday, Oct 10, 2002 |
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Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary | Front Page By B. Muralidhar Reddy
But mainstream political parties and independent observers believe that the much-trumpeted transition from the military to a civilian rule might never take place. Numerous pre-election laws and the disqualification of the two former Prime Ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, have undoubtedly robbed much of the election charm. Thanks to Gen. Musharraf's decision to lower the voting age to 18, the strength of the electorate has gone up to 71.9 millions. But most expect the turnout to be low as there was hardly any campaign in the absence of the two crowd pullers — Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Sharif. The turnout in the 1997 election, in which Mr. Sharif won with a heavy mandate, is 35.9 per cent. Extraordinary security measures have been taken to ensure that the polling is smooth. The Army has been kept on the alert and some of the paramilitary forces have been deployed on the eastern and western borders to assist police in poll duties. The `India factor' is very much in focus with the Government claiming to have detained six RAW `agents' allegedly on a mission to disrupt the polls. The contours of the new National and the four provincial Assemblies are expected to be clear by midnight tomorrow as the counting would start immediately after the end of polling at 5 p.m. It is not just the main parties but the bulk of civil society is convinced that the sweeping changes made by Gen. Musharraf in the Constitution have rendered the yet-to-be-born new Parliament into a `dummy' house. The extension of his tenure as President for five years and empowering himself to dissolve the National Assembly, besides the creation of the military-dominated National Security Council, through the statute changes, have drawn all-round flak. The debate among the political parties and the media, in the run-up to the elections, has been dominated by charges of "pre-election rigging" and the alleged blatant and brazen acts of the Government to help its favourite party, Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam), to emerge as the single largest party in the new National Assembly. Vociferous denials by the Government starting from Gen. Musharraf himself and assurances of holding a `free, fair and transparent' elections have not helped infuse confidence among the parties and civil society. In an interview to a television channel, Gen. Musharraf has defended the policies of his regime and the new electoral and other laws. He criticised the old political system that promoted "anti-democratic norms" and hoped that the new and capable leadership would emerge. ``The (past) political culture did now allow new leadership to emerge and turned the country's politics into a family culture,'' he said in an interview beamed live on the ARY Digital network. There was no democracy within the political parties themselves and family members were made to replace the party leadership. "It is not a monarchy,'' he observed. The previous leadership exhibited politics of hatred and was "acrimonious'' in nature, he said. Referring to Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Sharif, he said that since both of them were out of contest, the new leadership of PPP Parliamentarians and the PML would hopefully interact harmoniously in Parliament.
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