Pakistanis grow weary of religious parties' sway

Polls point to change in western provinces

BY Carlotta Gall
February 15, 2008

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Senator Asfandyar Wali, the leader of an opposition party, the Awami National Party, is campaigning for the elections next week from the safety of his bed, under a quilt and propped up on bolsters for his bad back at his country home near Peshawar.

Ill health aside, Wali is staying home because suicide bombers are seeking to kill him, his party has been warned by top government officials. There have been two bomb attacks on his party's election gatherings in the last week. Two candidates have been killed, one in a suicide bombing and one in a shooting in Karachi.

Yet despite the attacks and the limited campaigning, his party is expected to do well in parliamentary elections Monday. The religious parties that for the past five years have governed North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan Province, which border Afghanistan and the tribal areas, are foundering.

Since being swept to power in 2002 on a wave of anti-Americanism and sympathy for the Taliban after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, the mullahs here have found that the public mood has now shifted against them.

People complain that they have failed to deliver on their promises, that they have proved just as corrupt as other politicians and that they have presided over a worsening of security, demonstrated most vividly in a rising number of suicide attacks carried out by militants based in the nearby tribal areas.

''They did not serve the people,'' said Faiz Muhammad, 47, a farmer whose son was killed in the bomb attack at an Awami political gathering Saturday.

The shift in mood here may be a bellwether of larger trends nationwide. The religious parties held 59 seats in the 342-member Parliament, making them a kingmaker at critical times, like helping President Pervez Musharraf extend his military rule. But this time, their number may fall to single digits, according to some estimates.

Pollsters and political analysts in Pakistan have maintained that the religious parties command only a small percentage of popular support and that the 2002 elections were an aberration, a reaction to the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and the result of rigging by Pakistan's intelligence agencies, which have long had links with the religious parties.

Two opinion polls made public this week showed that the standing of the religious parties had fallen to a new low, with voters showing a strong shift of support toward the moderate parties.

A survey of more than 3,000 people conducted at the end of January by the International Republican Institute showed that the religious parties could command only one percent of the vote nationally, down from 4 percent in November. In North-West Frontier and Baluchistan, their share was 4 percent.

Meanwhile, support for the Pakistan People's Party, the party of the assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has soared to 50 percent nationally, the poll found. The face-to-face survey was conducted throughout Pakistan and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Another survey conducted by Terror Free Tomorrow, a bipartisan group in Washington that seeks to reduce support for international terrorism, showed backing at 62 percent for the Pakistan People's Party and the faction of the Pakistan Muslim League led by another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif.

If the Taliban were on the ballot sheet, they would garner just 3 percent of the vote, and Al Qaeda only one percent, according to the poll. The face-to-face nationwide survey of more than 1,000 people was conducted in January with D3 Systems and the Pakistan Institute for Public Opinion and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

In North-West Frontier Province, where religious parties won an outright majority and ran the province's government, they are blamed for being soft on the militants and for allowing ''Talibanization,'' the word used to describe the radical Islamist agenda creeping into society, which has included attacks on music stores and schools for girls.

''People are fed up because they are not opposing the attacks by the Taliban openly,'' said Muhammad Jawed, 40, a businessman who attended the funeral for Faiz Muhammad's son.

That frustration has redounded to the favor of moderate opposition parties like Awami, a long-established Pashtun nationalist party founded by Wali's grandfather. It was almost wiped out in the last elections in 2002 when it welcomed the American intervention in neighboring Afghanistan. In its place was elected a coalition of religious parties, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal.

They advocated the introduction of Islamic law, or Shariah, and the banning of music, movie theaters and alcohol.

Awami failed to win any seats in the National Assembly and only 10 seats in the provincial assembly. It is now hoping to triple that Monday and to secure as many as 12 National Assembly seats.

The religious coalition itself is in disarray, facing attacks from left and right. One of the largest parties in the coalition, Jamaat-e-Islami, is boycotting the elections, protesting what it says is an uneven playing field set up by Musharraf.

The other main party in the religious coalition, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, which won the bulk of the seats in North-West Frontier last time, is split after its leader, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, made compromises to support Musharraf.

In particular, Rehman broke with the militants in their standoff last summer with government forces at the Red Mosque in Islamabad, which his supporters took as a betrayal. When other opposition parties resigned from Parliament in October, seeking to undercut Musharraf's election to another term, Rehman stood by the president.

Rehman, too, is homebound, under threat from the militants who resent the support he has given Musharraf. His house has been attacked and he is under threat from suicide bombers, government officials have said.

President promises fair vote

Musharraf pledged Thursday to hold free, fair and timely elections after critics accused him of planning to manipulate the vote so he could maintain his power, The Associated Press reported from Islamabad.

In a televised speech four days before the crucial balloting, the retired general also said he was a firm believer in democracy, but not at the expense of the country.

''I definitely believe in democracy,'' he said. ''But not if it leads to the country being declared a failed state.'' He added, ''We have to tailor that democracy in accordance with our own environment.''