The Local Government elections in KPK this year were like no other in terms of security. Suicide attack and rocket launcher attacks were the highlights of the day. Other than this, small scuffles and firing incidents were reported while one candidate shot himself dead during celebration of his own win.
Sunday was the first day of the first phase of local government elections in KP’s 17 districts. The elections in the rest of KP will take place next month.
Polling started at 8 am and ended at 5 p.m. After a six-year hiatus, the first phase of local government elections was held on Sunday, marked by scattered acts of violence and attacks that took five lives and destroyed some polling booths.
Due to disturbances, including a suicide bombing in Bajaur, the abduction of polling staff in Bannu, a clash in Karak, and a mob attack on Minister Shibli Faraz’s vehicle in Kohat, the Election Commission of Pakistan, which set up 9,223 polling stations for 12.668 million registered voters, had to postpone the vote in some areas of the 17 districts.
Umar Khattab Sherani, the leader of the Awami National Party (ANP), was shot dead outside his home early Saturday, a day before local bodies polls. Sherani was a candidate for the tehsil Mayorship.
Two ANP employees were killed and five others were injured in a suicide attack on a car transporting voters to a polling place in Bajaur’s Mamund tehsil, according to District Police Officer Abdul Samad Khan. The suicide bomber detonated his device beside the vehicle in the Kamar Sar neighbourhood on the Inayat Killey-Laghari route near the Afghan border at around 12.40 pm, according to the police.
Shibli Faraz, the federal minister for science and information technology, was attacked in Kohat while voting in the Darra Adamkhel district during a demonstration against the merging of tribal areas with KP. According to police, the mob pelted the minister’s official vehicle with stones, wounding the driver. In Jammu, Paya Jawaki, Shindhand, and Ara Khel, the riotous mob also set fire to polling stations.
Protesters waved black flags and chanted anti-merger slogans, asking that the tribal areas be restored to their original status. Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, who condemned the attack on the minister’s vehicle, has directed the KP chief secretary and the IGP to submit a report.
The ECP also postponed elections in the Bakakhel tehsil of Bannu district, where unidentified persons abducted employees from five polling stations, as well as election materials, on the eve of the polls. The ECP postponed the polling, according to a senior administration official, despite the fact that the authorities were able to rescue the abducted workers. An FIR was filed, and a three-member team was constituted to investigate the incident and produce a report within a week, according to the official.
Officials reported that poll-related violence killed two individuals, cousins of PTI MNA Shahid Khattak, and badly injured three others in Karak’s Takht Nasrti tehsil’s Faqirkhel district.
Polling in the remote Bazaar-Zakhakhel region of Khyber district was halted when a rocket burst near a polling station. Local sources indicated that while no one was hurt, volunteers from the Bazaar-Zakhakhel peace committee used the incident as a reason to disrupt polls by holding polling personnel hostage and trashing electoral materials. However, they then blamed the incident on one of the non-local candidates and his followers.
othernews.pk spoke to Haseena Perveen, a female officer at the polling site is a teacher who worked as a lady officer in the polling station in Qasaba, a very poor and small village.
The situation was extremely tranquil in the morning, according to the lady officer, they used roughly 200+ ballet papers for women. Women in the area were illiterate, and there were few young women at the polling station. There was some activity and bustle in the evening, but no fights or terrible incidents occurred at the polling site.
Long before the polling for the ongoing local government election began in Peshawar, a presiding officer deputed at a women’s polling station in Peshawar was arrested, along with her husband, on suspicions of rigging, Geo News reported Saturday night.
