Monday, February 18, 2008

Pakistan: Election Violence

Filed under: Elections | Pakistan — by Bob Zuber @ 5:46 pm
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As Dawn Newspaper tallies the winners and losers (including Musharraf it appears), it also provides this overview of the violence that plagued a number of electoral districts:

“At least 14 people were killed and nearly 100 injured in election-related violence across Pakistan on Sunday and Monday, officials said. Nine of the deaths came on election day itself. On Monday, six people died in shootings in Punjab between rival party supporters, officials said. Two others died in the southern province of Sindh and one death was reported in Karak town of North West Frontier Province. A security official said about 100 people were also injured in election violence on polling day. But interior ministry spokesman Brig Javed Cheema said Monday’s polling was generally peaceful and orderly except for sporadic incidents.

In Lahore, the victims of Sunday’s shooting included Asif Ashraf, a provincial assembly candidate from former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N party. In another incident, a worker for Sharif’s PML-N party was shot dead by rivals outside a polling station in the industrial city of Sialkot, north of Lahore, on Monday, said party vice president Javed Hashmi.

In Sindh province’s Ghotki town, six people were injured during a clash between supporters of PPP and the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League-Q during polling, police said. And in Bajaur tribal district bordering Afghanistan, a bomb blast ripped through a wall of a polling station while around 300 people queued to cast their votes, officials and witnesses said. No one was injured and polling resumed shortly afterwards.

A rocket-propelled grenade hit a polling station in a remote part of southern Sindh province without causing casualties, a police official said. Separately, a bomb blast was heard in Quetta’s Nauroz Sports Complex area where several polling stations were located, while a small bomb exploded near a polling station on the city’s outskirts, police and witnesses said. There were no reports of casualties or damage. Also In Baluchistan province, two small bombs exploded separately near uncrowded polling stations, but there were no casualties, police said.”

Off Target

Update:

President Musharraf’s supporters conceded defeat last night in a landmark parliamentary election that could seal his political fate and resurrect democracy in Pakistan after eight years of military rule.

But while the two main opposition parties appeared to have swept the vote, neither was expected to win an outright majority, setting the stage for a coalition government in this chronically unstable country.

End to Military Rule?

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Words for Acts

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Tom Paine

---"Dissertations on First Principles of Government," 1795



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