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O 030520Z FEB 10
FM AMCONSUL PESHAWAR
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AMCONSUL PESHAWAR

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