ISLAMABAD, Dec 9: The process for the January 8 general elections moved further on Sunday as political parties got their favourite symbols and a threat by some of the main players to boycott the contest under an allegedly partisan set-up appeared to have abated.

As the Election Commission announced the allotment of 47 symbols to political parties or coalitions after a meeting in Islamabad, once strong pro-boycott sentiment in a major opposition alliance — the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM) — seemed to have lost steam with its main component of Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) reported ready to go to the hustings.

The APDM leadership met in Lahore under the chairmanship of PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif to decide whether or not to boycott the elections, which all opposition parties fear will be rigged as in 2002 if their demands to ensure a free, fair and transparent vote were not met.

The government rejects these fears, but the opposition sees the present interim government as only a continuation of the previous one and the Election Commission subservient to it.

Late night media reports of the new PML-N stance at the end of the Lahore meeting and in the absence of a joint APDM position yet brings could bring it closer to the thinking of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and the other opposition grouping of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) that her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leads.

Although most APDM parties have been calling for a boycott unless President Pervez Musharraf reverts to pre-Nov 3 emergency position and meets other demands, the situation could change radically with the PML-N rethinking, leaving pro-boycott members of the alliance to decide their course of action later.

The ARD had seemed more keen to contest the elections, though not ruling out the possibility of a boycott if its demands to ensure a fair vote are ignored by the regime and all opposition parties stay away.

Both the alliances have already agreed on 13 of the 15 points of a charter of their demands, the two points of disagreement being whether about 60 judges of the Supreme Court and the four high courts sacked under the emergency be restored immediately or by the future parliament, and what should be the deadline for the government to accede to these demands.

The PPP, which got the largest number of votes in the 2002 elections but lost to the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) in managing enough numbers in the National Assembly to form the government, gets its traditional symbol of Arrow as does PML its Bicycle and PML-N Tiger.

The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) alliance of six Islamic parties, which are also members of APDM, was finally allotted its previous symbol of Book after a hitch over rival claims within the alliance and objections by the PPP and some other smaller parties who accused the religious parties of exploiting the religious sentiments of voters by presenting their election symbol as a symbol of the holy Quran.

Most of other parties which had contested the previous elections also got their old symbols, such as Kite for the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Lantern for the Awami National Party, Oil Lamp for PPP-Sherpao, Rose for PML-Functional, Camel for Balochistan National Party-Awami, Fist for PPP-Shaheed Bhutto, Tree for Pakhtunkhawa Milli Awami Party, Umbrella for Pakistan Democratic Party and Ladder for Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (Samiul Haq).

The symbols, which are meant mainly to facilitate voting by illiterate voters, will be printed on the ballot papers against the names of the candidates.

All party candidates for the National Assembly or a provincial assembly must produce a certificate of their respective parties to get their symbols printed on the ballot papers for each constituency. Independent candidates will seek symbols from those not reserved for political parties.

Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf had not applied for a symbol as it had already announced a boycott of the elections.

NO TAKER OF LOTA: The Election Commission’s list had a total of 147 symbols for the Jan 8 elections, one of them being Lota, which means a water jug with a spout but is used in vernacular political parlance for a turncoat. But there was no taker for this, although the previous National Assembly and provincial assemblies had many turncoats who were elected in 2002 as the candidates of opposition parties like the PPP, PML-N and MMA but later crossed the floor to join the PML and were frequently taunted as “lotas” during parliamentary proceedings.

Many of them got cabinet slots — such as former defence minister Rao Sikandar Iqbal, former parliamentary affairs minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi, former Kashmir affairs minister Makhdoom Faisal Saleh Hayat, former science and technology minister Chaudhry Nouraiz Shakoor — and will be PML candidates in the Jan 8 election.