February 21, 2008...6:33 am
Pakistan Election Results -Defeat for the Islamists?
A quote from Breaking down Pakistan’s election results by Kanishk Tharoor:
Defeat for the Islamists?
An item less reported in the western press is the abject performance of Islamist parties in the election. The MMA, the major alliance of Islamist parties, won only three seats in the National Assembly. In 2002, the MMA won 63 seats in the country’s parliament. Tellingly, the godfather of the MMA and the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, lost in his constituency. The Islamists were expected to do well in the northwest, where Pakistani forces have been fighting Taliban and al-Qaida-allied militants in recent months.
In the supposed Islamist heartlands of the North-West Frontier Provinces and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Islamists won less than 5% of the vote. Instead, the secular Pashtun nationalist ANP made huge gains after a costly week in which the party’s candidates and supporters came under routine attack from militants. The secular PPP also made large gains in the region.
It should be heartening to fighters of the “war on terrorism” that secularists can triumph in the rugged “havens” of al-Qaida and Taliban-sympathy.
Read the full piece here.
1 Comment
February 21, 2008 at 8:29 pm
hmmm……so if “Islamists” (whatever that is) parties havent won, do u intend to say those that have won are non-”Islamists” ? thats the tone i get from this writing…..
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