Shootout Kills 1 at Pakistan Polls
By Kathy Gannon
Associated Press Writer
Thursday,
October 10, 2002; 3:03 AM
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan –– A shootout at a
polling station in southern Pakistan killed one person and injured two
others on Thursday, a government official said, as the country held its
first election since a 1999 coup ended democratic rule.
Loyalists of rival political parties exchanged fire at the polling
station in Nawabshah, Sindh province, Home Secretary Brig. Mukhtar Ahmed
said.
"Right now we don't know what was behind the shooting," Ahmed said in
Karachi, the province's violent capital.
Party workers said the combatants were loyalists of the Pakistan
People's Party, and a breakaway faction of that party. The leader of the
PPP, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was barred from participating
in the parliamentary elections because of corruption charges.
Nearly 100 political parties were taking part in the vote to select a
national parliament and four provincial legislatures. Whoever wins will
have to find a way to work with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the army
leader who has laid the groundwork for remaining Pakistan's main power no
matter what the election brings.
A team of international observers were in Pakistan to monitor the vote
amid claims by opposition and human rights workers that the election was
being manipulated. The government has denied those charges saying the vote
would be "transparent and fair."
Early voting was light at polls in the federal capital of Islamabad and
southern Karachi.
Throughout the country, security was tight for fear of attacks, mainly
by violent groups opposed to Musharraf's decision to ally the country with
the United States in its war on terrorism in neighboring Afghanistan.
Pakistani authorities have also arrested several suspected intelligence
agents accused of working for rival India to disrupt the vote.
With surveys showing pro-Musharraf parties running neck-and-neck with
parties controlled by Pakistan's two best-known political families,
results of the voting were impossible to predict.
The leaders of the two main parties – Bhutto of the Pakistan People's
Party and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League
– are both out of the race.
A decree by Musharraf barring anyone convicted of a crime in absentia
eliminated Bhutto, who has been convicted of corruption and is living in
self-imposed exile. Sharif, who was ousted by Musharraf in 1999, is also
on the sidelines, having accepted a 10-year exile to Saudi Arabia in
return for his release from prison.
Still, the two former prime ministers remain a strong force, with their
parties expected to provide the stiffest challenge.
A coalition of Islamic hard-liners called the United Action Forum,
comprised of six religious parties, also was expected to win support amid
a strong undercurrent of resentment among many Pakistanis over their
nation's support for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.
The election was being held under controversial new rules decreed by
Musharraf earlier this year. All candidates must have a university degree,
a law that eliminated 90 percent of Pakistan's mostly illiterate
population. Musharraf has also given himself the power to dissolve
parliament and sack the prime minister whenever he sees fit.
The general won a controversial referendum earlier this year and will
remain president for at least another five years, but he has insisted he
would allow the prime minister to run the country.
Musharraf defends his reforms as protection against a return of corrupt
and incompetent politicians. But several of the leading candidates running
on the ticket of the pro-government party, called the Qaid-e-Azam faction
of the Pakistan Muslim League, are tainted by graft allegations.
Some 72 million people were eligible to vote in the election.
© 2002 The Associated Press
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