Pakistan Views

Election candidates launched a final push for votes on Saturday, after a US lawmaker warned that Washington could cut military aid if next week’s polls are not free and fair.
Campaigning ends at midnight (1900 GMT) on Saturday and all meetings and processions are banned from then until after Monday’s landmark vote, seen as decisive for the political future of President Pervez Musharraf.
The former ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) as well as the opposition party Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and supporters of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) are all set to rally.
President Musharraf faces possible impeachment if the election installs a hostile parliament.
PPP co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari, will be in Lahore and is likely to attend a seminar by a regional media association before meeting party delegations, senior party official Naveed Qamar AFP.
Nawaz Sharif has not planned any public meetings but may address a rally in Lahore, his spokesman Zaem Qadir told AFP.
An opposition alliance All Party Democratic Moment (APDM) that is boycotting the vote, including the party of former cricketer Imran Khan and Islamic organisations, is set to hold a meeting at the Pakistan monument ground in the same city.
Campaigning has however been mostly lacklustre in the leadup to the election, due partly to a wave of suicide attacks, most notably the one that martyed Benazir at a political rally on December 27.
Opposition allegations of widespread rigging in favour of Musharraf’s allies (PML-Q) have also left the country’s 81 million eligible voters feeling disenfranchised.
A senior US senator in a Congressional team travelling to monitor the polls said on late Friday that the United States should cut off military aid to Pakistan if the vote is not fair.
Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, who is head of the influential Senate foreign relations committee, also forecast riots throughout Pakistan if the elections were found to be “patently rigged.”
Asked what would be the consequences of unfair elections, he said: “I would move to cut off aid to Pakistan, military aid.” He specifically cited the sale of F-16 fighter jets and P3 long-range maritime surveillance aircraft.
President Musharraf, who has received 10 billion dollars in US aid since 2001, pledged on Thursday that the elections would be fair but warned opposition groups not to protest against the result if they did not accept it.