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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s presidential hopefuls began a final push for
support Friday on the eve of an election that slain opposition
leader Benazir Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, is expected
to win.
Zardari is the frontrunner in a three-way race
to take power in a country riven by Islamic militancy and economic
turmoil.
Security will be raised on election day,
officials have told Agence France-Presse, and Zardari has already
moved house due to fears of attempts being made on his life, just
nine months after Bhutto was killed at a campaign rally.
Tensions have risen further after a failed
assassination attempt on Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who was
not in his car when it was hit by sniper fire on Wednesday.
Zardari will face a multitude of problems if he
wins a secret ballot among lawmakers and takes charge of a
nuclear-armed state where bombings and suicide attacks have killed
nearly 1,200 people in the past year.
Pakistan’s economy is backsliding with
inflation rampant and a volatile political situation contributing to
a 40 percent fall on the stock market since January, in a country
already reliant on foreign aid.
The unrest that has struck the nation has been
attributed to militants angry at former President Pervez
Musharraf’s support for the United States and its “war on
terror.”
Musharraf’s resignation triggered Saturday’s
election but his military policy is likely to continue with
Zardari.
The 52-year-old presidential hopeful has said
that Pakistan would continue to back the US in its efforts to defeat
terrorism if he is elected.
“I will work to defeat the domestic Taliban
insurgency and to ensure that Pakistani territory is not used to
launch terrorist attacks on our neighbors or on NATO forces in
Afghanistan,” he said in a Washington Post article. “We stand
with the United States, Britain, Spain and others who have been
attacked.”
Islamabad is heavily dependent on the billions
of dollars that have headed here since Musharraf backed the US after
the September 11 attacks in 2001, and in its subsequent invasion of
Afghanistan.
As co-chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party
(PPP), Zardari already heads a fragile coalition government which,
although still in office, recently lost the backing of two-time
former premier Nawaz Sharif’s party.
A PPP aide told Agence France-Presse that
Zardari would Friday meet parliamentarians and his own party officials
to finalize strategy for election day.
“Inshallah [God willing] he will win and
secure 500 of the 700 votes of the electoral college,” the aide
said, referring to the Senate, National Assembly and four provincial
assemblies that would choose Pakistan’s president.
Zardari is being challenged by retired Chief
Justice Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui, who is backed by former premier
Sharif, and Mushahid Hussain, a close aide of Musharraf.
-- AFP
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