Meter Down

source: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=100179 

Saturday, March 08, 2008
M P Bhandara

Various expressions such as ‘massive victory’, ‘crushing defeat’, ‘a clean sweep of President Musharraf’s allies’, ‘the nation rejects previous rulers’ and a slew of chest-thumping slogans have been used by the victors and the media to celebrate the electoral success of the PPP and the PML-N. Even the New York Times, on February 29 referred to the “overwhelming rejection of Musharraf’s party by the voters this month”; surprising since the Times has a reputation for scrupulous fidelity to facts. There is an inconvenient truth about this election and President Musharraf has pointed it out in his assertion that his allies have got more votes than his adversaries.

Let us consider the voting facts for a moment: According to the statistics of the Election Commission, the PML-Q and its allies, the MQM, the PML-F and the PPP-S received 10,844,233 votes. The PPP-P received 10,055,491 votes and the PML-N 6,240,343 votes. Therefore, the PML-Q and allies received 40 per cent of votes, the PPP-P 37 per cent and the PML-N 23 per cent of the 27.14M votes cast for the three major parties.
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