Fourth round of local elections marred by violence

The fourth round of local elections got off to a bad start on Sunday. According to the Pakistani daily ‘The News’, a bomb exploded in a cinema in the Pakistani commercial city of Karachi, on the eve of polling, killing two and injuring 14, six of them seriously. Only one third of the 1,200 seats in the cinema were occupied at the time of the blast, the report added. Some 20 million registered voters throughout Pakistan are expected to go to the polls on Monday as the fourth round of local body elections gets under way. “Things are going well,” the head of Pakistan’s election commission, Kanwar Dilshad, in the capital, Islamabad, told IRIN on Monday. “The process is happening smoothly, justly and fairly,” he said. Dilshad said he was expecting a voter turnout of 50 percent, with results coming in later on in the day. Asked if he anticipated any problems, given events in Karachi, Dilshad said, “Absolutely not - we don’t expect any unpleasant incidents.” According to Dilshad, 73,152 candidates in 30 selected districts, who include 14,885 women, 17,315 peasants and workers, and 1,975 minority candidates, will be standing in the elections. Local elections in the country’s remaining 11 districts - 10 of them in the North-West Frontier Province and one in the southern province of Baluchistan - would be held under the fifth and final phase, scheduled for 9 August, he said. Meanwhile, CNN reported that at least seven people had died and many others had been injured in what officials said was violence related to Monday’s elections. Earlier reports disclosed that as many as 45,000 solders were patrolling Karachi, ahead of the poll, in which political parties were barred from contesting. The security measure was taken to ensure smooth polling, following the decision by the Muttaheda Qaumi Movement, and its breakaway group, the Mohajir Qaumi Movement, to boycott the election. Monday’s election is part of the government’s devolution of power plan following the seizure of power in a bloodless coup by the military leader and now president, Pervez Musharraf, in October 1999. He has publicly pledged to hold national elections within the next two years as part of his plan to return the country to democracy.