Pakistan holds landmark polls under Taliban threat

Pakistani voters went to the polls Saturday, braving Taliban threats to cast their ballots in an election marking a historic democratic transition for the nuclear-armed state. Queues began to form before polling stations opened at 8:00 am (0300 GMT), but delays were reported in parts of Karachi, the commercial hub, and early voter numbers muted in the volatile northwestern city of Peshawar. Army chief Ashfaq Kayani was among early voters, a powerful symbol in country which has seen three military coups and is undergoing its first democratic handover of power from one civilian government to the next. At one polling station in Islamabad, more than 200 people including women and the elderly lined up to vote. Abdul Sattar, 74, said: "We want change, we are really fed up with old faces coming back to power every time and doing nothing for the nation." The front-runner is ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif, head of the centre-right Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) but much of the campaign has been electrified by cricket star Imran Khan making promises of reform and an end to corruption. The charismatic 60-year-old leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) tapped into a last-minute surge of support after fracturing his spine when he fell from a stage at a campaign rally on Tuesday. Although he is expected to make a full recovery, he is flat on his back in hospital and aides say he cannot even vote on Saturday. The outgoing centre-left Pakistan People's Party (PPP) has run a lacklustre and rudderless campaign, with its chairman, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, too young to run and largely hidden from public view due to Taliban threats. Its campaign has instead starred its two dead leaders, founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged under military rule in 1979, and his charismatic daughter Benazir Bhutto, assassinated in a gun and suicide attack in 2007. The Taliban, who consider democracy un-Islamic, have vowed to disrupt the vote with suicide bombings and have launched attacks against the main secular parties, killing more than 120 people in the run-up to the vote. There were already signs of depressed turnout in parts of the country, including Karachi where an AFP reporter said voting had been delayed at eight polling stations he visited, as officials awaited the delivery of ballot boxes and papers. Shakeel Ahmed, a 45-year-old Karachi voter, said: "People are scared and waiting to the see what the situation is like before they come out." Election commission official Najeeb Ahmed said that any delays at polling booths would be compensated by extending voting hours. More than 86 million people are eligible to vote for the 342-member national assembly and four provincial assemblies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan. Polls close at 5:00 pm. Commentators are divided on whether a wealth of enthusiastic first-term voters and Taliban threats will make turnout higher or lower than the 44 percent at the last elections in 2008. With around 30 percent of voters aged under 30, young people are expected to play a decisive role and provide key support for Khan's PTI, which boycotted polls in 2008 and won one seat in 2002. The main issues are the tanking economy, an appalling energy crisis which causes power cuts of up to 20 hours a day, the alliance in the US-led war on Islamist militants, chronic corruption and the dire need for development. The umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) stepped up their threats on the eve of the elections, warning voters to boycott polling stations to save their lives. More than 600,000 security personnel have deployed nationwide and around half the estimated 70,000 polling stations have been declared at risk of attack, many of them in insurgency-torn parts of Baluchistan and the northwest. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has warned that the violence has already impaired the fairness of the elections "almost beyond repair". The PML-N and PPP have dominated politics for decades, led by two of the richest families in the country, the Sharifs and the Bhuttos. But Khan has sought to galvanise a young, urban middle class with promises of sweeping change. Kinship and patronage traditionally determine voting, particularly in the countryside and while Khan led a high-energy campaign, drawing enormous crowds around the country, it remains unclear how many seats he can win. With no reliable polling data, Sharif has been earmarked the most probable winner but if PTI do well enough to become a formidable opposition, there are concerns that the emergent coalition will be weak and possibly short-lived. Sharif served as prime minister from 1990-93, when he was sacked for corruption, and from 1997-99, when he was deposed by the military, although his family say he is a changed man who will this time govern more successfully.