Pakistan Votes, Musharraf Confident

Pakistan's military leader, President Pervez Musharraf, said Tuesday he was confident of victory, as the country voted in a controversial referendum on whether to extend his rule for five more years.

But warnings by his opponents that he might use the machinery of state to influence the result gained some credence as evidence emerged that employees of Pakistan's vast civil service were being pressured into casting their ballot.

Musharraf is expected to win despite boycott calls from most of the main political parties, but he was hoping for a high turnout that would lend him a stamp of legitimacy.

The government-run Electoral Commission relaxed voting rules and set up an unprecedented 87,000 polling stations — some of them in novel places such as gas stations, hospitals and prisons.

The turnout will be closely watched as a barometer of just how popular he is.

"I am very confident," Musharraf said as he voted at the Fatima Jinnah Women's University in Rawalpindi. "The information I have got is that the turnout is very good."

Musharraf has responded to public criticism by removing his military uniform during his referendum campaign. He voted on Tuesday in a cream sports shirt and black trousers, accompanied by his wife and mother.

Pakistan's political parties oppose the referendum as undemocratic and unconstitutional and have called for a boycott, but Musharraf has dismissed them as being divorced from public opinion.

Mohammed Shabir, a 35-year-old laborer, was in a line of 10 people waiting outside a voting station in the eastern city of Lahore as the polls opened. "I wanted to be the first to cast my vote" for extending Musharraf's term, Shabir said.

Turnout appeared low in Pakistan's biggest city Karachi on a baking hot day and in many other towns and cities, although it was higher in polling stations near government offices and state institutions. Polls close at 7 p.m. local time (9 a.m. EDT) and initial results are expected to start coming in the evening.

Hundreds of students cheered and waved Pakistani flags as Musharraf arrived to cast his ballot, but some voters complained they were being forced into polling booths.

In Rawalpindi, around 100 employees of the state's Water and Sanitation Authority arrived at the Islamia High School polling station with their superiors.

"We are being dragged to vote," one employee, who declined to give his name, told Reuters.

Journalists saw a police inspector open several ballot papers at the polling station to see which way people had voted, and he also brushed aside polling agents' objections when one man turned up to vote without an identity card.

Through Rawalpindi food was being cooked for voters to encourage them to attend — on the orders of local councilors — while a private band in green and red uniforms played folk songs on bagpipes and drums outside the Islamia High School.

In the southern city of Karachi, polling stations were set up in banks, government offices, hotels and petrol stations, with two at the headquarters of state-owned Pakistan International Airlines (PIA).

"We got a verbal instruction that we have to cast our votes," one PIA employee told Reuters. "But there is no pressure for us to vote 'yes.'"

"While working in government, you can't say 'no,'" said one civil servant voting alongside his colleagues in Islamabad.

Other voters said Musharraf had lost their support by the way he had run his referendum campaign, denying political parties a fair chance to put their arguments across.

"I voted no," said student Hina Mubarak. "He has become a typical politician and is behaving like them."

But elsewhere, many people said they had voted "yes."

"I am supporting Musharraf in the hope those corrupt people will not be allowed to return," said medical student Mansoor Mehmood in Rawalpindi.

Musharraf seized power in a bloodless military coup in 1999. The Supreme Court endorsed him but gave him three years to introduce reforms and return the country to democracy.

Musharraf called the referendum to extend his presidency before that deadline comes up in October, when the first parliamentary elections since the coup are scheduled to be held.

Musharraf went from being an international pariah to the darling of the West after throwing his weight behind the U.S.-led war on terror in the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.