Pro-Taliban parties sweep regional Pakistan legislature

? A coalition of pro-Taliban religious parties swept the provincial legislature near the Afghan border, in the first solid results today in Pakistan’s election.

Campaigning on a strong anti-American platform that called for an end to Pakistan’s support for the U.S.-led war on terror in Afghanistan, the coalition of six hard-line parties had a clear majority in Pakistan’s North West Province legislature, according to the election commission.

For the first time since a 1999 coup, Pakistanis voted Thursday in elections the military government hailed as a historic return to democratic rule and the opposition denounced as a stage-managed sleight of hand to mask President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s firm grip on power.

Sporadic violence Thursday left seven people dead, a bloody but common dose of Pakistan’s rough-and-tumble politics. Turnout was projected to be low, hurt in part by a series of decrees that kept the country’s best-known political players on the sideline, and by self-declared constitutional changes that have assured Musharraf ultimate control of Pakistan’s fate.

Musharraf an important U.S. ally in the war on terrorism has created a military-controlled National Security Council that will handle all national policy decisions. He has also granted himself the power to fire the prime minister and dissolve parliament, rendering the vote little more than window-dressing for continued military rule.

The religious parties were also doing better than expected in the southern port city of Karachi and in the southern part of Punjab province amid a strong undercurrent of resentment over the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Nearly 100 parties were contesting the elections for a new parliament, prime minister and four regional legislatures.