January 01, 2008	Tuesday	Zilhaj 21, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Dec 31: Both the government and the Election Commission on Monday sent out what critics saw as alarms of flight from the date of Jan 8 elections despite insistence by the main party aggrieved by the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto that the schedule must be kept.

A government statement quoted interim Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro as telling a meeting of his cabinet that any decision regarding “any change in the date of elections will be taken after detailed consultations with all concerned”.

An Election Commission meeting held on Monday to discuss the issue put off a decision until Tuesday so it could get reports about the situation from the four provinces.

Both meetings betrayed an inclination towards a postponement on the ground of law and order situation after the Dec 27 assassination of the Pakistan People’s Party leader (PPP) leader in Rawalpindi.

“The Election Commission is the primary institution to decide about the holding of elections on the announced date, based on the assessment of the ground situation,” the government statement quoted Mr Soomro as saying at the meeting.

But opposition parties, which have been calling for a new independent election commission as one of their largely unmet demands to ensure free and fair elections, see the present one as subservient to the wishes of President Pervez Musharraf.

A PPP central committee on Sunday said the party would go into the elections despite its grief and would resist any change of schedule.

The same seemed to be the stance of the other major opposition party -- the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif -- which is likely to formally reverse at a central executive committee meeting on Tuesday its initial response of announcing a boycott of the elections after Ms Bhutto’s killing.

PML-N sources said the party would go along with the PPP and would oppose and view any postponement as an attempt to spare the formerly ruling Pakistan Muslim League and it allies from people’s post-assassination anger on the polling day.

“The government is running away from the elections because the PPP will sweep the polls,” PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar said on Monday while reacting to the latest signals from the cabinet and the Election Commission.

“The party will not permit any postponement of the elections,” he told Dawn by telephone from Naudero, Sindh, where the party on Sunday installed Ms Bhutto’s 19-year-old son Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari as the new party chairman with his father Asif Ali Zardari as co-chairman.

Mr Babar would not reveal how the PPP would react if the elections were postponed, and said: “The party will announce its reaction if and when the elections are postponed.”

The PPP expects to benefit from a wave of sympathy after the killing of its charismatic leader and the PML-N from the difficulties of the former ruling coalition for the same reason.