Election violence in Pakistan: 74 killed and counting

Imran Ayub

Dawn

Publication Date : 03-05-2013

 

Thursday’s blast outside an office of the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) comprised the 42nd attack on electioneering parties since April 11 when Pakistan's May 11 polls were exactly a month away. Since then, continued attacks, including bombings and armed assaults, have claimed more than 70 lives, including that of two contesting candidates, and left over 350 injured with the security administration and caretaker government finding itself in the midst of the “most bloody and challenging elections” in Pakistani history.

And with less than 10 days left now, the authorities sounded even more confused and divided in their opinions over the origin of threats, the motives behind the brutality and what exactly lies ahead. Mainstream parties claim to have restricted their election campaigns and others have expressed mistrust of the administration under the caretaker set-up, demanding deployment of army troops inside every polling station.

“Obviously, the situation Pakistan faces today was never witnessed in its history before,” said Arif Nizami, the federal information minister. “So it’s a great challenge for us to hold free and fair polls on time. But there have been cases of misreporting by the media as well which counts every incident of violence as coming under election-related violence.”

However, he agreed that militancy and banned outfits were the major threats amid “random incidents of violence with political motives”.

The minister’s view, though, ran contrary to that of the interior ministry, which says election-related attacks are being patronised from across the western borders.

“We have intelligence reports that terrorists who have come here from Afghanistan are involved in attacks on political parties during electioneering,” the director general of the ministry’s National Crisis Management Cell (NCMC), Tariq Lodhi, told Dawn on Wednesday.

There was no assessment from the NCMC on the local front amid threats by the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has claimed to have carried out majority of the recent attacks, including the killing of an MQM candidate in Hyderabad, a suicide attack on the election rally of Awami National Party (ANP) leader Ghulam Ahmed Bilour in Peshawar that claimed 15 lives, and a couple of Karachi bombings.

Since April 11 to date, 74 people have been killed and 369 injured, including women and children. With the election campaigns of political parties yet to gain momentum in three provinces - Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa - election camps and offices have already been attacked. This has affected the pace of electioneering and raised security concerns among candidates and activists.

The situation has turned so grim that the Election Commission, in a statement issued earlier this week, expressed dissatisfaction over security arrangements and called for chalking out an action plan to maintain peace during electioneering.

With frequent attacks averaging more than one every day for almost a month now, the authorities in Sindh admit that they would need the army’s assistance for polling security.

“We have formally requested the authorities concerned for the army’s assistance,” said Sharfuddin Memon, special assistant to the caretaker chief minister of Sindh.

“Actually the united stand that has been taken by three parties - ANP, MQM and Pakistan People's Party - has at least removed the fear of violence on political grounds on their part and there has been no such violence reported in Sindh. Fear of militancy is the only major threat so far and we hope to meet the challenge with the support of political parties," he said.