Pakistan: Ruling party losing support among victims of disaster

Mehmood Kot: A month after Pakistan's worst natural disaster, those most affected have lost almost everything they had. But the ruling political party is losing things too: It is losing the poor's vote.

In Mehmood Kot, 40km east of Multan in southern Punjab, day labourer Mohammad Ramazan says he won't vote again for his representative in parliament because she has done nothing for his demolished village.

He said Hina Rabbani Khar, minister of state for finance and economic affairs, just drove through the village after the floods and didn't stop.

"I thought she would take care of us, but it did not happen," he said. "In the campaign, they promise a lot, but they do not take care of us."

The floods have deepened anger with the government of President Asif Ali Zardari, who also heads the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) which was already perceived as ineffective.

Three visits

Khar, a PPP member of parliament, said she had been to the village three times since the floods ripped through Pakistan, forcing at least six million from their homes and killing more than 1,600 people.

"Tell me who is ready to deal with the disaster like this," Khar said. "We all saw what happened with Katrina in the United States. ... Here you are looking at a slow-moving disaster, literally inching forward, through the length of your country."

Her explanations don't matter much to Ramazan, who lost two children to diarrhoea in the past month. Rukhsana and Abdul Hakim were just two years old and five months old.

"We've been shattered," he said. "At this point we have nothing. I have nothing to give to my children. Eid is coming.