The rest of the Frontier is surrounded by federally and provincially administered tribal areas, where local maliks traditionally strike a deal with Islamabad, which will be hard to do now because of the local Taliban’s insurgency in North and South Waziristan, bearing the brunt of the US-led ‘war on terror’.

In Punjab a strong anti-establishment sentiment prevails all across, save perhaps the pro-Musharraf Chaudhry cousins’ home district of Gujrat and those of their kith and kin. (The cousins control the king’s party, the PMLQ.) Most big cities will fall either to the PPP or the Sharif League. The Chaudhries’ image stands further damaged by the highhandedness of their chosen caretaker administration and their big-money-bought infiltration into the local district governments, a mechanism to devolve power introduced by Musharraf.

The PPP is kicking off its election campaign in Punjab on February 14 and will have only three days in which to conclude it; the Sharifs and the Chaudhries have been at it for longer. The Sharifs’ succinct message that 16 crore people and not 16 generals decide who rules Pakistan is being heard loud and clear, which may dampen public support for the PPP’s stance of working with the generals instead of sending them back to the barracks.

In a fair election, Sindh is a two-party fiefdom where the dominant PPP in the rural areas and the MQM in the urban centres will have little opportunity to lock horns. The erstwhile ruling Muslim League’s chief minister, Arbab Ghulam Rahim, like his Chaudhry mentors in Punjab, is also busy working through the local and the caretaker government-grid to get desirable results.

... contd.