Musharraf allies sweep Pakistani local polls

While political parties were barred from taking part, candidates did little to hide their loyalties. The outcome reinforces expectations that President Pervez Musharraf, a strong ally of the West's war on terrorism, will be re-elected in 2007.

"What we are seeing is that enlightened, progressive and moderate candidates are winning. This is a welcome development and it will spur a new wave of progress in the country," Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told state-run Pakistan Television.

Opposition parties cried foul after Thursday's third and final phase of the local polls to elect councils and mayors, known as Nazims, for Pakistan's 110 districts.

There were accusations of ballot rigging and money politics, but few reports of violence, in contrast to earlier rounds when media reported scores killed and hundreds hurt.

Kanwar Mohammad Dilshad, permanent secretary at the Election Commission, said the number of complaints was slight, and the final round had been conducted smoothly.

The Pakistan Muslim League (PML) won all but a handful of the 35 districts in the central province of Punjab, while it swept interior Sindh and its government ally, the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), captured the southern province's two main cities, Karachi and Hyderabad.

Having lost Karachi, the Islamist alliance of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) also suffered major setbacks in Pakistan's two other provinces, Baluchistan and North West Frontier.

The MMA, the largest opposition block in the National Assembly, controls the provincial governments in both tribal-dominated provinces, but its grip appears to be slipping two years ahead of provincial and national polls.

Although in opposition, the Islamists backed General Musharraf until he reneged on a pledge to give up the post of army chief in 2004.

Relations deteriorated further following raids on mosques, the imposition of new rules governing Islamic schools or madrasas, and the army's campaign to root out militants in MMA-dominated tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

The Nation newspaper's editorial on Friday said the outcome had been a "foregone conclusion" as the opposition appeared to have given up the fight after government parties' strong showing in the two rounds in August to elect district councillors.

The mainstream opposition remains in disarray with Pakistan's foremost civilian political leaders, former premiers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, languishing in exile, self-imposed in Bhutto's case.

Critics accuse Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, of trying to re-engineer Pakistan's polity so that all roads to democracy lead to him.

But analysts say the army chief's strategy could come unstuck because of fault lines between the factions of the Muslim League he cobbled together after ousting the party's leader, Sharif, six years ago and sending him into exile.