Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to vote in wake of quake

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan, July 9: Survivors of last year's earthquake in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) go to the polls on Tuesday in the hope that a new government would speed up reconstruction and rehabilitation in their devastated region.

Nine months ago, Ziauddin Pirzada lost three of his family when their house in the capital Muzaffarabad caved in. He's impatiently waiting for permission to build a new home, while rentals and land prices have soared in the ruined city.

''My priority is to vote for a person who can forcefully raise our problems and get them resolved at the earliest,'' said the 35-year-old who sells shoes in the city's Madina bazaar.

Establishing effective government in PoK will take a lot more than electing 41 new members of the legislative assembly.

PoK has its own constitution and prime minister, but its government is regarded as little more than Islamabad's puppet, lacking the leverage of Pakistan's four provinces.

Many civil servants died in the quake, government buildings collapsed and bureaucratic records were lost. Tens of thousands of people are still living in camps.

Sikander Hayat Khan described himself as the prime minister of a graveyard last October while the death toll climbed toward 73,000 in PoK and North West Frontier Province.

Though the Legislative Assembly building is still standing, it is seen as too dangerous to use, and there are plans to move the seat of the government to a new site.

A master plan for urban reconstruction is yet to be announced, though people in the countryside have started rebuilding homes, emptying out many of the tent camps erected for an estimated three million people rendered homeless by the quake.

OLD DISPUTE ''Reconstruction of destroyed houses is our number one priority ,'' Khawaja Farooq Ahmed, a candidate from Muzaffarabad, said amid a sombre campaign. At an election rally yesterday, Hayat, who is stepping aside, stressed his All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference's role at the vanguard of the ''freedom movement'', though his view of freedom means all of Kashmir becoming part of Pakistan.

For most people, however, getting their lives back together outweighs issues linked to the old dispute between Pakistan and India over their homeland.

''My problem is getting a job for myself and education for my children. We don't have schools,'' said Misri Khan, a labourer in Rawalakot, a less badly hit town further south.

''The Kashmir issue is not my problem. Pakistan and India will decide it.'' The quake generated heaps of Pakistani and Indian sympathy for Kashmir, but it failed to shake into life a slow moving, two-year-old peace process between the South Asian rivals.

To contest the elections, candidates have to declare support for Kashmir's accession to Pakistan, barring groups that want independence from both New Delhi and Islamabad.

''It is a big cruelty,'' Amanullah Khan, the leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, told Reuters during a demonstration by hundreds of supporters in Rawalakot.

''It is an ugly black spot on the forehead of Pakistan. We want this clause removed.'' said Khan.

The Muslim Conference's main rival, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party, has been exiled whereas Islamist parties have had less influence, despite support for Muslim militants in Jammu and Kashmir.

They could make ground this time, thanks to their high-profile role in organising relief after the quake as a shocked government tried to get its act together.

REUTERS