PESHAWAR, Aug 22: The ANP-backed Watan Dost panel has emerged as the single largest political grouping in the first phase of local body elections, regaining much of the ground it had lost to the MMA alliance of religious parties in the last general elections.
The Pukhtun nationalists who had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the religious right in the heartland of the NWFP reclaimed the ground they had lost in nine of the 12 districts in which polls were held last week.
Of the 556 union councils, the Watan Dost group has won 111. It has emerged as a major force in Peshawar, Charsadda, Nowshera, Mardan and Swabi - the five important districts that form the so- called Peshawar valley.
Significantly, it was the Peshawar valley where MMA’s phenomenal success had changed the political landscape of the NWFP in the last general elections. The main losers were the Awami National Party and Pakistan People’s Party.
ANP’s secretary information Syed Aqil Shah has already claimed that the Watan Dost group is in a position to form governments in the five districts. The resurgence of the nationalist party is all the more significant because it came after the ANP had been hit by an internal crisis that saw the unceremonious ouster of its ‘Iron Lady’ Begum Nasim Wali Khan and strengthened the hands of Asfandyar Wali Khan.
The JUI-F, a senior component of the MMA, has emerged as the second major political group, bagging 93 union councils in the 12 districts. The party has gained fresh ground in the southern district of Bannu, the constituency of Chief Minister Muhammad Akram Khan Durrani, and Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s Dera Ismail Khan.
The Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians has also done well winning 63 union councils and claiming the third position. It has done particularly well in Peshawar where like the ANP, it had suffered from the MMA onslaught. The Jamaat-i-Islami has been among the losers. It has been able to win only 56 union councils, most of them in Peshawar. The Pakistan People’s Party (Sherpao) has won 39 union councils, most of them in Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao’s native Charsadda district.
The ruling PML has failed miserably in the first round, a fact also acknowledged by the party’s Secretary General Mushahid Hussain Syed who described its performance in the NWFP as ‘disappointing’.
The party has won only 37 union councils in the 12 districts, its single major win being in Haripur with nine councils.
