Early wins for ruling party allies

Pakistan's government parties claimed early wins while opposition groups cried foul as unofficial results poured in yesterday following the first round of local elections.

The ruling party said yesterday the first phase of the local polls in the country marked a vote for moderation as candidates backed by moderate forces won more seats.

"People have reposed their confidence in the local government system launched by President Pervez Musharraf in 2001," Pakistan Muslim League (PML) Secretary General Mushahid Hussain told a news conference.

Some 114,000 candidates contested the elections on Thursday in 53 districts, with sporadic incidents of violence reportedly leaving more than a dozen people dead and scores injured in clashes.

Political parties could not contest district council elections, but they openly showed which candidates were theirs even if colours and symbols were barred from campaigns.

With general elections due in 2007, parties want district leaders in place who can influence voting for seats in provincial and national assemblies.

It matters for President Pervez Musharraf, one of the West's main allies in a global war on terrorism, as he will seek re-election by the assemblies and the Senate that emerges from the vote in two years' time.

The chief minister of Punjab reckoned the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q), the party backed by Musharraf, had scored a landslide in the most populous of Pakistan's four provinces.

"Eighty per cent of the winners are candidates supported by us. The PML has come out as a strong political force, and its impact would be visible in the 2007 general elections," Punjab's Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi said.

In southern Sindh province, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), a junior partner in government, was sure of wresting Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, from Islamist parties who won in 2002.

"We have won in 110 out of the 178 union councils in Karachi," Kunwar Khalid Yunus, a central leader of the MQM and a member of the National Assembly, said.

The results of the local body elections have come as a blow for the Jamaat-e-Islami, which is unlikely to control administrations in any of the 18 towns of the metropolis.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement and its allies, including the Pashtun- dominated Awami National Party (ANP) are claiming victory in 14 of the towns.

The Awamdost group backed by former Premier Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) is dominating the rest of the four towns.

"The results are being changed," said Naimatullah Khan, former nazim of Jamaat-e-Islami- backed city government of Karachi.

"The MQM ministers supervised the polling. The local body system which was brought by President Pervez Musharraf is being destroyed," he said.

General Musharraf took power in a popular and bloodless military coup in 1999, and the two civilian prime ministers from the 1990s, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, live in exile.

Successes in these polls appeared patchy for Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N and Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, but political analysts believe they still possess popular support.

In the two tribal-dominated provinces of Balochistan and North West Frontier Province (NWFP), there were signs that conservative Islamist parties' grip on power was also in danger of slipping.

Banded together under the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the Islamist parties became the largest opposition block after scoring their largest ever gains in 2002, thanks in part to a backlash against the US-backed overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan a year earlier.

The PML-Q was leading in Balochistan, while in the North West Frontier Province the MMA's dominance has been cut by another opposition group, the Awami National Party, which wants more autonomy.

A remaining 56 districts will be contested on August 25.

With Reuters inputs