NYT : Pakistan Vote Delayed to February

Pakistan Vote Delayed to February

By JANE PERLEZ | January 2, 2008

LAHORE, Pakistan — Parliamentary elections scheduled for Jan. 8 have been postponed by the government until February, the secretary of the Election Commission said Tuesday.

The election date is expected to be announced formally on Wednesday, and President Pervez Musharraf is scheduled to address to the nation that evening.

The timing of the elections and how the news of the delay is received could be critical to Pakistan’s stability. The two main opposition parties have threatened continuous protests against the government over the delay.

Members of Mr. Musharraf’s faction of the Pakistan Muslim League acknowledged in the last several days that the elections could not be delayed for more than six weeks without risking fresh outbreaks of violence. “Six weeks is just about the outer limit before the frustration really hurts Musharraf,” said a member of the president’s faction.

The Election Commission secretary, Kunwar Muhammad Dilshad, said it would not be possible to hold the elections next Tuesday because the printing of ballot papers had stopped after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the opposition leader, and rioters had damaged election offices in Sindh Province.

“In 11 districts of the Sindh Province, offices of assistant election commissioners have been burnt to the ground,” he said. “Nothing is left.”

Mr. Dilshad defended the delay, saying it was the first time in Pakistan’s history that an election had been postponed after the date had been announced.

But opposition party members and Western diplomats said the decision to push the election into February was largely intended to deprive the two main opposition parties of a huge sympathy vote after Ms. Bhutto’s death on Thursday.

Her party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, is now led by her son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, 19, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari. The other, somewhat smaller, main opposition party, the faction of the Pakistan Muslim League led by Nawaz Sharif, said it was ready to participate in the vote on Jan. 8.

President Musharraf’s party wanted to try to recoup some of its plummeting popularity and to let the sympathy toward the opposition parties wear off, the opposition party officials said.

What form opposition protests of the delay would take was on the agenda of a central executive committee meeting on Wednesday of the Pakistan Peoples Party, said Raza Rabbani, a member of the panel.

“This question of agitation and what line of action” will be discussed, Mr. Rabbani said. “We do not want to move in isolation. We would talk to other opposition parties on a course of action.”

A February voting date would probably be acceptable to the Bush administration, even though the Americans have been pushing for elections on schedule, the member of Mr. Musharraf’s party faction said.

The February date for the election was also influenced by a desire not to hold the elections during Muharram, the annual festival for Shiite Muslims that begins Jan. 10.

The festival is often an occasion for sectarian violence in Pakistan, and party officials of both the government and the opposition agreed that Muharram was not a suitable time for elections. The elections could have been held on Jan. 22 or 23 after the most important part of the festival was over, but the government chose a later date, officials said.

Furor continues over the Musharraf government’s assertion that Ms. Bhutto died not from gunfire or shrapnel from a suicide bomber’s explosion on Thursday, but from striking her head as she tried to duck during the attack. Many of her supporters blame the government for her death, some accusing it of poor security and others of outright complicity.

On Tuesday, an aide to Ms. Bhutto, Senator Latif Khosa, said Ms. Bhutto had been planning to give two visiting American lawmakers a 160-page report accusing the Musharraf government of taking steps to rig the Jan. 8 vote, according to The Associated Press. The meeting, with Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island, was scheduled for a few hours after she was killed.

Anger over Ms. Bhutto’s death has added to growing disenchantment with the government over other issues, including increased terrorism attacks.

With its decision to postpone the elections, the government risks increased polarization, said a Western diplomat, who added that people would see the delay for what it really was.

The problems of burned electoral offices in Sindh were easy to remedy in a nation with more than 100 electoral offices, the diplomat said.

At the same time the government delayed the election, it extended the detention of Aitzaz Ahsan, the leader of the opposition lawyers’ movement.

Mr. Ahsan was arrested on Nov. 3, the first night of the emergency rule, which Mr. Musharraf lifted in mid-December. He was presented with new detention papers ordering him to remain under house arrest for another month, his son, Ali Ahsan, said Tuesday.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.