Pro-Musharraf parties score early polls win

Political parties could not contest district council elections, but they openly showed which candidates were theirs even if colours and symbols were barred from campaigns.

At least 16 people were killed and hundreds injured in sporadic violence during Thursday's voting.

With general elections due in 2007, parties want district leaders in place who can influence voting for seats in provincial and national assemblies.

It matters for President Pervez Musharraf, one of the West's main allies in a global war on terrorism, as he will seek re-election by the assemblies and the Senate that emerges from the vote in two years' time.

The chief minister of Punjab reckoned the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q), the party backed by Musharraf, had scored a landslide in the most populous of Pakistan's four provinces.

"Eighty percent of the winners are candidates supported by us. The PML has come out as a strong political force, and its impact would be visible in the 2007 general elections," Punjab's Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi said.

In southern Sindh province, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), a junior partner in government, was sure of wresting Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, from Islamist parties who won in 2002.

"We have won in 110 out of the 178 union councils in Karachi," Kunwar Khalid Yunus, a central leader of the MQM and a member of the National Assembly, told Reuters.

Democracy has had a sorry history in Pakistan. The military

has ruled for more than half the country's 58 years since independence.