ISLAMABAD, Feb 17: The race for the Senate will get hotter as Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali begins on Tuesday a nationwide tour that has already been clouded by weather and violence.

The government says the prime minister’s most elaborate post- election national tour is meant to take the political leadership in the country’s four provinces into confidence about the emerging situation in the Gulf region because of the threat of a US-led war against Iraq.

But political sources said next week’s election for the remaining 92 seats of the 100-seat upper house would be the main focus of Mr Jamali’s contacts with politicians of his own Pakistan Muslim League-Q and allied and opposition parties.

The four provincial assemblies will elect 80 senators in their separate special sessions at provincial capitals on Feb 24 while the 342-seat National Assembly will elect four senators from the federal capital, Islamabad, and 12 National Assembly members from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) will elect eight senators from their tribal agencies on Feb 27 in Islamabad.

A total of 186 candidates are left in the field to compete for 92 seats after 67 withdrew their candidatures by the deadline of Feb 8. Eight candidates for the reserved seats for women and technocrats were declared elected unopposed from the Punjab province.

The PML-Q and its allies have expressed their confidence that they will win a majority in the upper house, whose election will mark the completion of the country’s parliament, the lower house having been elected on Oct 10.

BETTER MAJORITY SOUGHT: But political sources said the ruling coalition was anxious to get something better than its slender majority in the National Assembly that keeps Mr Jamali’s government dependent on smaller splinter or regional groups against a formidable opposition led by the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) of six Islamic parties.

The opposition parties were originally optimistic about winning a Senate majority mainly on the back of their numerical strengths in the provincial assemblies of Sindh, the Frontier and Balochistan but now concede the task has become nearly impossible because of what they call government manipulation. The government denies the charge.

Political sources say Mr Jamali will use his tour, beginning from Sindh, to ensure that the provincial law-makers of PML-Q and the allied parties remain in line, try to win over wavering opposition members and fine-tune adjustments with other parties for some border-line seats.

Mr Jamali was originally due to begin his tour on Sunday from the Frontier, but heavy weekend rains there forced him to change plans and place that MMA-ruled province at the end of his schedule.

But even the planned start of his trip in Sindh on Monday was put off to Tuesday because of rains and was overshadowed by Sunday’s murder in Karachi of Khalid bin Waleed, a former provincial assembly member of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), a PML-Q ally.

While the parties ruling at the centre or in the provinces have the necessary sinews for the senatorial battle, those out of power can only rely on their members’ loyalties, which have seen most controversial shifts in recent months after the October 10 elections.

MONEY BAGS: The presence of several influential and wealthy independent candidates in the race has aroused fears of vote-buying.