Votes in abundance for Zardari today
By Tariq Butt
ISLAMABAD: There are different estimates of votes to be secured by the winning presidential candidate, Asif Ali Zardari, in Saturday's election.
"We will get up to 450 votes," PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar told The News on Friday. "We will be well over the 400 mark. We don't need 51 per cent to win because there are more than two contestants in the run."
A Zardari aide told this correspondent that the PPP co-chairman would bag over 500 votes in the 702-member electoral college. When asked by The News last week about the expected tally of votes he would get, Zardari himself avoided a guess, saying he did not want to indulge in it.
However, an independent estimate, based on numerical strength of the PPP and its allies and their rivals, shows that Zardari will get more than 400 votes. He is likely to secure the maximum percentage of votes from the Balochistan Assembly to be followed by Sindh, the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Punjab. His position is better in the National Assembly than the Senate.
The PML-N knows that Zardari will face no problem in getting himself elected comfortably. It has not put any obstacle in his way. But its main concern is to keep not only its own votes in parliament and the Punjab Assembly intact but also those of the PML-Q defectors, who have switched to its side mainly in the Punjab.
"We are well aware that if a major bloc of the PML-Q turncoats slipped away because of the handiwork of Governor Salmaan Taseer or Adviser Manzoor Wattoo, we will be in trouble in the Punjab. If Zardari succeeds in getting 51 per cent of the votes from this provincial assembly, the PPP will prove that the Shahbaz Sharif government is in minority," a PML-N leader said.
He said instead of paying any significant attention to the lobbying among MNAs and senators, the PML-N had concentrated on the Punjab to establish that it had the majority there and the PPP and its supporters were in a minority.
All the three presidential candidates – Asif Zardari, Justice (retd) Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui and Mushahid Hussain Sayed – avoided mudslinging against each other during the campaign. By and large, they showed restraint and control. However, efforts were made to put Siddiqui under pressure through writ petitions filed in different high courts. Zardari did not say a word about his two challengers.
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