ISLAMABAD: Ruling Pakistan Peoples Party chief Asif Ali Zardari on Saturday established an early lead in the countrys presidential election, securing a majority of votes cast by members of a provincial assembly which is part of the electoral college.
The widower of slain former premier Benazir Bhutto secured 107 votes in the 124-member assembly of the North West Frontier Province, state-run PTV reported.
Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui, fielded by the PML-N party of former premier Nawaz Sharif, bagged 10 votes while Mushahid Hussain Syed, the candidate of the PML-Q, got only three votes. Four votes were rejected.
Under the complicated formula used for counting the votes cast in provincial assemblies, the 107 votes polled by Zardari will have an actual weightage of 56 votes. Only the votes cast by members of the 100-strong Senate and 342-member National Assembly, the two houses of parliament, are counted in the normal fashion.
Voting was suspended in the NWFP assembly for a while after a woman legislator showed her ballot paper to other members. The presiding officer suspended polling for some time but it resumed later.
Pakistani parliamentarians and legislators of four provincial assemblies voted in the polls that are expected to be swept by Zardari.
Zardari is set to win despite the PML-Ns decision last month to pull out of the ruling coalition as the PPP has the backing of several smaller parties and independent lawmakers.
Chief Election Commission Qazi Muhammad Farooq supervised the polling in a joint sitting of the two houses of parliament. Voting was held simultaneously in the four provincial assemblies of Punjab, Sindh, North West Frontier Province and Balochistan.
The voting through secret ballot began at 10 am and would end at 3 pm. The Election Commission is expected to announce the unofficial result shortly after the end of polling.
The election was necessitated by the resignation last month of former President Pervez Musharraf, who stepped down to avoid impeachment by the coalition.
A week after his resignation, the PML-N pulled out of the alliance, accusing Zardari of reneging on promises to restore judges deposed during last years emergency and to field a non-partisan candidate for the presidential polls.
Musharraf had swept the last presidential election held in October last year to obtain a second five-year term, but the PPP and PML-N had opposed his re-election, saying the electoral college had comprised the national and provincial assemblies that were on the verge of completing their terms.
