The elections take place at a time the country is sinking deeper into financial crisis and Talibanism.  Since the beginning of April, over 100 people have been killed, including several candidates, by Taliban, and its extended arms.

The ballot is taking place under the aegis of a caretaker government at the central and provincial levels, and the authorities have deployed hundreds of thousands of security personnel, including tens of thousands of troops. In Punjab province alone, 300,000 security personnel, including 30,000 troops, are put  on poll duty.
 
A significant fact that deserves mention is that today’s’ ballot comes after Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)-led government completed its five-year term; it is the first time a civilian government has served its full term in the history of the country which takes pride in its three As- Army, America and Allah, though not necessarily in that order.  The PPP government had survived by not interfering with Army’s domain and by the Army’s reluctance to burden itself with the economic mess.

The PPP government not only continued military dictator Pervez Musharraf’s support to the US war on terrorism post 9/11 against the Taliban in Afghanistan, but also did not stand in the way of US drone strikes on the militant safe havens in the country’s tribal belt adjoining Afghanistan. What was more its reign saw the army marching into tribal belt to crush Taliban resistance, displacing millions of civilians in the process.

In the 1980s, General Zia ul-Haq’s military dictatorship backed Washington’s policy of destabilising the Soviet Union by stoking a civil war against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul. The CIA funnelled arms and money through ISI – military intelligence agency – to sectarian Sunni Islamist groups, including the forerunners of Al Qaeda. This war was the political framework for Zia’s Islamisation of Pakistan; it fuelled ethno-sectarian conflict and has since plunged Pakistan into violence. And its manifestation is visible to the naked eye in Karachi, the country’s commercial capital, which has become Taliban’s first major outpost outside the tribal heartland.

Balochistan is no less victim. The   PPP regime, like its predecessors, relied on the military to suppress the Balochi urge for a respectable place under the Pakistani sun and honourable share in the resources of the province which are benefiting the rest of Pakistan.  Sunni militant groups have been drawing Shia blood by regularly targetting the Shia pilgrims passing through the province on their way to neighbouring Iran.
 
Pakistan is the world’s fifth largest democracy and the world’s second largest Muslim country after Indonesia.  The ballot is for 272 seats in the 342 member National Assembly (Parliament). The remaining 70 seats would be awarded to parties having been reserved for women and minority groups.  Pakistan voters in the last election held in 2008 delivered a split verdict