October 12, 2007	Friday	Ramazan 29, 1428

TORONTO, Oct 11: Ontario’s Liberals have won a first-time back-to-back majority in the provincial elections since 1937.

When Ontario voters went to the poll on Wednesday, the Liberals were unsure of how their vote bank would swing, and were hoping at most for a minority win. But the results of Ontario provincial elections which were unofficially confirmed on Wednesday night, showed the Liberal party in with a clear majority, a second-time win for a party leader, Dalton McGuinty.

The Liberal party is largely supported by the Muslims and Pakistanis in Ontario as well.

Coming on air, McGuinty’s satisfaction and glee at his second run in office was obvious when he thanked his voters and said: “The people of Ontario have spoken tonight with clarity and with purpose. They have chosen the Ontario Liberal party to govern for four more years.”

While Dalton McGuinty was plagued throughout the election campaign with accusations of, ‘broken promises’ and ‘Rising taxes’ hurled at him often brutally by his opponents, analysts say, it was his main opposition leader PC party candidate John Tory’s critical stand on government funding of religious schools that tilted votes in the Liberal party leader’s favour.

Among Pakistani expatriates, winners of seats in Ontario Dr Shafiq Qadri from Etobicoke North district and Yasir Naqvi from Oakville, both belonging to the Liberal party.

Dr Qadri is a respected member of the Canadian as well as the expatriate community and is known to be a smart and experienced communicator. The voters, who went to the polls on Wednesday, were given two ballots, one of which was for the Ontario’s candidates and the other was for the referendum which was also held alongside the provincial elections.

The referendum put forth the question, about which electoral system should Ontario use to elect members to the provincial legislature.

Presently the election works on the ‘First-Past-the-Post’ system, in which the candidate with the most votes wins and the political party that wins the most electoral districts is asked to form a government.

However, the referendum question asked voters to consider a new system called Mixed Member Proportional, which combines two voting systems. If accepted, it will have two votes in future elections: one for a local member and one for a political party.