NWFP: GOOD ELECTION NEWS FOR ANP

C O N F I D E N T I A L PESHAWAR 000014


E.O. 12958: DECL: 2/3/2020
TAGS: PGOV PTER KDEM PK
SUBJECT: NWFP: GOOD ELECTION NEWS FOR ANP

REF: 09 PESHAWAR 161

CLASSIFIED BY: Candace Putnam, Consul General, U.S. Consulate
Peshawar.
REASON: 1.4 (b),(d)



1. (C) Summary. In by-elections January 28, the Northwest
Frontier Province (NWFP) ruling Awami National Party (ANP) won
the election in Swat, trouncing the religious parties'
candidate. In Mansehra, poor strategic choices by the Pakistan
Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) cost the party the seat, which went
to an irreligious member of the religious Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam
(JUI-F) party. The Swat race showed the ANP's continued potency
in the Malakand Division, once a religious party stronghold.
The Mansehra race deepened divisions within the NWFP chapter of
the PML-N, a major potential ANP rival in the next general
election. In Swat, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) backed the
ANP candidate, and it fielded a weak candidate in Mansehra.
Jamiat-i-Islami (JI) re-entered the electoral fray and lost in
both contests; despite this poor showing, JUI-F leader Fazlur
Rehman visited Peshawar for talks about reforming the previous
alliance of religious parties. For all its faults, the ANP
seems without a credible challenger for provincial leadership
(septel). End Summary.


2. (SBU) On January 28, the NWFP held elections to determine
the succession to two parliamentary seats vacated by the deaths
of the officials who had held them. In Swat, the election was
to fill a seat in the Provincial Assembly previously held by Dr.
Shamsher Ali Khan, an ANP-affiliated MPA killed by a suicide
bomber at his home in December 2009. In Mansehra, a district in
the formerly earthquake-affected Hazara region of NWFP, the seat
contested was in the National Assembly and had been occupied by
PML-N-affiliated Faiz Mohammad Khan, who died in December 2009
of natural causes.


ANP Wins, Religious Parties Lose in Swat
--------------


3. (SBU) In Swat, the ANP nominated the deceased MPA's brother
Rehmat Ali Khan and had received the backing of most of the
other secular parties, including PPP, for his candidacy.
Security worries somewhat restricted the ability of parties to
campaign (septel) and depressed turnout to around 16,000 total
voters. (Note: The electoral district, in Kabal and Matta
areas of Swat, had been the heartland of pro-militant sentiment
prior to the April-July 2009 military operation in the Malakand
Division.) Nonetheless, the ANP candidate won the four-way race
with a massive plurality, gaining well over twice as many votes
as his nearest rival, a Pakistan Muslim League candidate who
drew votes primarily from the lower-class Gujar ethnic group
(reftel).


4. (C) The most striking feature of the election result,
however, was the plight of the JI candidate, a former provincial
minister who - despite the backing of the JUI-F, his greater
ability to campaign without fear of militant attack, and the
religious bent of the electoral district - received the fewest
total votes. In the immediate wake of the vote, the JI
candidate claimed electoral fraud (along with the two other
losing candidates); however, the JI candidate has not backed his
claim; Malakand-area JI member Sahibzada Tariqullah confirmed
that the scope of the defeat has left the JI leadership
grappling with the question of how to reverse their party's
slide in provincial politics. JUI-F leader Maulana Fazlur
Rehman visited former JI leader Qazi Hussain Ahmad on January 31
to discuss the prospects for re-forming the Muttahida
Majlis-i-Amal (MMA),the dormant all-religious party alliance
which controlled the provincial government from 2002-2008.


PML-N Loss in Mansehra Prompts Further Internal Conflict
-------------- --------------


5. (SBU) The implications of the by-election in Mansehra are
less clear-cut than those in Swat. In this race, held in a
district divided between ethnic Pashtuns and Hindko-speaking
"Hazarajats," the PML-N squandered its natural advantage of
incumbency when party leader Nawaz Sharif intervened to ensure
that the brother of his own son-in-law received the nomination
rather than the daughter of the deceased MNA. In the wake of
this decision, three other locally powerful candidates announced
themselves and local political dynasties rearranged themselves
around these candidates; a few other minor party candidates also
ran without much local support. In the close-fought race, in
which over 125,000 voted, the JUI-F candidate Laiq Mohammad
defeated his closest rival by a margin of 5,000 votes. The
PML-N candidate, while polling respectably in absolute terms,
finished an embarrassing fourth place behind a PML candidate
(supported by prominent local independents) and a PPP candidate
(supported by the ANP). The winning candidate, a brother of the
relatively secular but JUI-F-affiliated federal Science and
Technology Minister Azam Swati (a former U.S. resident),is a
landed politician better known for his populism than for any
personal piety or religious enthusiasm.


6. (C) In a fortuitously timed meeting in Peshawar with the
NWFP leadership of the PML-N on January 29, Nawaz Sharif
attempted to shore up the unity of the party's base after its
unnecessary electoral defeat and to push the election out of the
headlines. Speaking to the press in Peshawar, Nawaz attacked
President Zardari for hiding behind his immunity rather than
submitting himself to the judgment of Pakistan's courts. But
according to former NWFP Provincial Assembly Speaker Shahzada
Gustasip, Nawaz spent most of the non-televised portion of the
meeting defending his own actions and resolving quarrels between
NWFP PML-N leaders.


7. (C) These quarrels are substantial and have been deleterious
to the PML-N's ability to organize itself in the NWFP. The loss
of the Mansehra seat cuts the number of PML-N MNAs to three out
of the NWFP's 35-member delegation - all of these from the
party's stronghold in southern Hazara. The party's principal
Pashtun NWFP leaders, Iqbal Jhagra and Saranjam Khan, see the
party's pro-Hindko stance (which has included a strong
resistance to the ANP's initiative to rename the NWFP as
Pakhtunkhwa) as harmful to its electoral prospects in the NWFP
outside of Hazara. By contrast, former NWFP PML-N leader Pir
Sabir Shah and current NWFP PML-N leader Sardar Mehtab Ahmad
Khan, both from southern Hazara, have fought attempts to pitch
the party's appeals to Pashtuns and risk alienating its
supporters in Hazara. According to Gustasip, this basic
strategic dispute was papered over by an agreement to form a
commission and probe the reasons for the PML-N loss, but bad
feelings remain.


Comment
--------------


8. (C) Consulate contacts unanimously point to the ANP as the
principal victor in the January 28 by-elections. The party's
resounding victory in Swat, while admittedly a product of
extremely favorable circumstances, is a good rejoinder to claims
by commentators and rivals of an anti-ANP backlash in Malakand
due to the party's corruption, early mishandling of the
militancy problem and more recent slowness of reconstruction
there. The abysmal showing of the religious parties' candidate
in their former Malakand stronghold indicates that these parties
will have serious problems in winning elections there in the
future. The PML-N fiasco in Mansehra has both highlighted the
organizational weakness of that party and further weakened that
party's unity; Nawaz's meddling will diminish the likelihood of
prominent NWFP politicians defecting to the PML-N in the future.
For all of the ANP's faults, the party currently seems bereft
of a credible challenger for future leadership of the NWFP. End
comment.

PUTNAM