Workers sort ballot boxes to be sent to polling stations ahead of the general election in Pakistan, yesterday.
MULTAN: Gunmen kidnapped a son of former Pakistani prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani yesterday, the final day of campaigning for landmark elections which the Taliban have vowed to attack with suicide bombers.
Ali Haider Gilani was seized in a hail of gunfire on the outskirts of the city of Multan in Punjab province. Police said his secretary was killed and five people wounded, including one of his guards.
“People came on a motorbike. They also had a car and opened fire and abducted Ali Haider Gilani on a black Honda,” police officer Khurram Shakur said.
The Gilanis are one of the most powerful families in Multan and a key member of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), whose campaign for re-election has been curtailed by threats from the Pakistani Taliban.
The insurgents, who have dismissed the election as unIslamic, say they have dispatched suicide bombers to mount attacks on polling day on Saturday.
There was no claim of responsibility for the abduction of Ali, a provincial assembly candidate for the PPP whose two brothers are standing for the national assembly.
The ex-premier was disqualified after being sacked and indicted by the Supreme Court last year for refusing to reopen corruption cases against the president.
“We are not being provided with a conducive atmosphere,” he said in Islamabad after the kidnapping, calling on PPP activists to remain “quiet and peaceful”.
Saturday’s vote will be a democratic milestone in a country ruled for half its history by the military. But the campaign has been marred by Taliban attacks which have killed at least 116 people since mid-April.
In the southwestern province of Baluchistan, meanwhile, gunmen opened fire at a candidate for the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), tipped to win the election, killing one supporter and wounding two.
Regional assembly candidate Akbar Askani escaped unharmed from the attack in the town of Mand, provincial Home Secretary Akbar Hussain Durrani said.
In the northwest tribal district, a bomb killed one person and wounded six at a gathering of the right-wing Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam in the troubled district of North Waziristan, officials said.
There were no claims of responsibility for the attacks, but Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud has ordered suicide bombings on polling day, one of his commanders said.
“We have dispatched several of fedayeen (suicide bombers) to carry attacks on election across Pakistan,” he said, showing a copy of a letter apparently sent by Mehsud to Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan, mapping out the nationwide plan for bombings.
“We don’t accept the system of infidels which is called democracy,” Mehsud said in the letter, dated May 1.
Pakistan will deploy more than 600,000 security personnel on polling day, when the electorate of more than 86m will choose a national parliament and four regional assemblies.
The Taliban have singled out the PPP and its main coalition partners in the outgoing government for threats, forcing them to take a low profile and allowing former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and cricket legend Imran Khan to steal the limelight.
Sharif says Pakistan should reconsider its support for the US war on Islamist militancy and favours negotiations with the Taliban. Khan advocates shooting down US drones and withdrawing the Pakistani military from insurgency-infested ethnic Pashtun areas along the Afghan border. Agencies
