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India's election marathon set to end
Agence France Presse - May 13, 2009
Elizabeth Roche – Indian voters cast the final ballots on Wednesday in the country's marathon elections, with analysts predicting a shaky coalition government that might struggle to survive a full term.
Polling was held across seven states for the fifth and final phase of voting in the world's largest democratic exercise, which began way back on April 16.
The first exit polls – banned during the staggered voting process – are expected hours after polling closes, although the official result will be announced by the Election Commission only on Saturday.
Neither the ruling alliance led by the Congress party nor the main opposition bloc headed by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is seen as capable of securing an absolute majority.
Saturday's results are therefore expected to trigger a frantic round of political horse-trading as the two main blocs scrabble for new partners among a multitude of regional parties – all with their own local agendas.
"Everything will depend on numbers," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh acknowledged at a press briefing this week.
Whatever formation emerges to govern India's 1.1 billion people, observers say it will be an unwieldy coalition that will struggle to present a united front at a time when India is facing a sharp economic downturn and numerous foreign policy challenges.
"There is an absence of national leaders who are able to project the issues and enthuse people. There are no towering personalities to set an agenda for the nation," said political analyst Neerja Chowdhury.
In recent days, Congress leaders have made repeated overtures to the party's former communist partners, who withdrew their support from the ruling coalition last year in protest at the signing of a nuclear pact with the United States.
The only realistic option to the two main rivals would be a "Third Front" grouping of regional parties, but observers say they would be hard pushed to pull together the 272 seats needed to command a parliamentary majority.
The election comes at a pivotal time for India and its 714-million strong electorate.
After five successive years of near-double digit growth that lent the country the international clout it has long sought, the economy has been badly hit by the global downturn.
And there are major security concerns over growing instability in South Asia, particularly in arch-rival Pakistan, with whom relations plunged to a new low following last year's bloody militant attack on Mumbai.
One race attracting attention on Wednesday was in Baramulla in Indian Kashmir where Sajad Lone became the first Kashmiri separatist leader to contest an election since an armed insurgency against Indian rule erupted in 1989.
Lone broke ranks with the separatist movement, which has a long-standing policy of boycotting all elections in the Muslim-majority region, but rejects the "traitor" label that some have thrown at him.
"Fighting elections is a change of strategy and not ideology," he told AFP.
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