Bhutto Loses Her Bid to Regain Power in Pakistan Vote : Elections: Ex-prime minister claims a ‘moral victory’ but says ‘the election was stolen from us’ through massive fraud.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan —  Ousted Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s emotion-packed bid to regain power collapsed in a stunning defeat Wednesday in violence-marred Pakistani parliamentary elections.

Bhutto stopped short of conceding, however, bitterly charging that the election was “stolen” by the military-backed caretaker government and opposition.

“We expected fraud, but there has been massive fraud across the country,” Bhutto told a TV reporter at her home in the southern city of Larkana. “. . . I feel sorry for freedom.” Her voice cracking, Bhutto, 37, said she had won a “moral victory, but the election was stolen from us. . . . I feel the nation has been cheated.”

Despite her charges, international observers and journalists found minor irregularities but little immediate evidence of widespread ballot rigging, intimidation or fraud.

In an election widely seen as a referendum on Bhutto, unofficial returns early today showed that her populist Pakistan People’s Party suffered setbacks in every major urban area, 11 weeks after her scandal-plagued administration was abruptly dismissed for alleged corruption and misrule.

Bhutto, who had predicted a “landslide victory” when she voted early Wednesday, even lost a long-safe seat in the northern city of Peshawar, one of two districts where she was running. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, jailed since Oct. 10 on charges of kidnaping and extortion, won one seat but lost in his home district, Nawabshah.

“We’re looking at a crushing defeat for Benazir Bhutto,” Maleeha Lodhi, a political analyst in Islamabad, said. “The huge crowds obviously didn’t translate into votes.”

“I’m absolutely shocked,” Najam Sethi, an influential journalist in Lahore, said. “The whole bloody country’s going to be in a state of shock. Nobody’s going to believe this.”

Bhutto had fought on the defensive ever since President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed her 20-month-old government Aug. 6 and installed a caretaker government that included her harshest critics.

She was later charged with fraud and abuse of power in seven separate cases filed before newly created special government courts. A single conviction could bar her from holding public office for seven years.

Bhutto’s triumphant 1988 “people power” election, after years of exile and imprisonment, was hailed for returning democracy to Pakistan after more than a decade of military rule. She was the first woman elected to head a Muslim country in modern times.

More than 100,000 troops were called out across the country for Wednesday’s election. Gun battles between rival supporters in several areas left at least nine people dead and scores wounded, but the violence appeared less severe than in previous elections.

The vote sets the stage for a new government led by the military-backed Islamic Democratic Alliance, a fractured coalition of 18 political and religious parties united only in their antipathy to Bhutto.

It was unclear early today if the alliance would win an outright majority of the 217 seats at stake in the National Assembly, the law-making lower house of Parliament.

At 5 a.m. Pakistan time, the alliance held 61 seats, contrasted with 26 for Bhutto’s party. Independents had won 22 other seats. Three seats were unopposed, and an election in Sialkot was halted after the candidate was gunned down Monday.

Analysts said that Nawaz Sharif, 41, Bhutto’s chief rival and a stalwart of the late military dictator, Gen. Zia ul-Haq, would probably form the new government.

Sharif, an industrialist former chief minister of Punjab province, said in a statement that the election showed voters were “united to defend the ideological frontiers of the country and that no power on Earth can defeat them in their just cause.”

Another rival, caretaker Prime Minister Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, easily won his rural district in southern Sind province, a constituency he had lost in 1988.

Unofficial returns indicated the IJI, the Urdu initials for the opposition coalition, had captured most of Punjab, Pakistan’s largest and most volatile province.

IJI candidates virtually swept the urban centers of Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Another opposition group, the militant ethnic MQM party, won handily in Karachi, its power base and the nation’s largest city.

Analysts said it appeared that Bhutto’s party would win fewer than 60 seats this time, contrasted with 94 in 1988.

Election officials said turnout from the nation’s 49 million voters appeared light after a bitter monthlong campaign that saw Bhutto and her chief opponents accuse each other of lying, corruption and treason.

Diplomats said opposition charges last week that Bhutto had lobbied the U.S. Congress to suspend $564 million in economic and military aid to Pakistan had hurt her chances. Although Islamabad is Washington’s closest ally in South Asia, the aid was frozen Oct. 1 after the White House concluded that Pakistan had developed a nuclear explosive device early this year, in violation of a 1985 U.S. law.

“It created a tremendous feeling of resentment,” one Western diplomat said.

A senior IJI member said Bhutto may have contributed to her own defeat by repeatedly warning supporters in recent weeks of ballot rigging and fraud.

“She frightened her voters away,” he said with a grin. “Why should they come out and vote after she’s already said the vote will be rigged?”

In the TV interview, Bhutto charged that ballot boxes had been stolen and that her supporters had been prevented from voting.

In Lahore, Asghar Khan, head of a minor party allied with Bhutto, charged that gunmen had occupied a polling booth in his race against Sharif. Khan said the gunmen had seized ballot papers and stamped them for Sharif before escaping.

Pakistani journalists in strife-torn Sind province also reported three incidents of ballot-snatching in rural villages. In Karachi, they said more troops were visible than voters at many polling stations, and streets were largely deserted except for military armored personnel carriers.

But festive crowds flooded Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s fourth-largest city, as convoys of flag-waving motorcycles and cars snaked through the streets. A tour of several polling places revealed few problems.

“Of course we had some apprehension,” said Abdul Qadier, senior civil judge for Rawalpindi. “By the grace of God, there is no problem. The complaints are only about shortages of forms.”

“These are absolutely fair elections,” said Mohammed Tahir Qureshi, a polling officer. “No one has interrupted us.”

In an impoverished country with less than 25% literacy, voters used thumbprints to stamp ballots marked with symbols: an arrow for Bhutto’s party and a bicycle for the opposition. Men and women voted in separate polling places.

Six international teams were in Pakistan to observe the elections, including a 40-member delegation from the Washington-based National Democratic Institute. The group will issue a preliminary report Friday.

Bhutto voted in her hometown of Larkana and later prayed at the grave of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was deposed by Zia and hanged in 1979.

Zia died in a still-unexplained plane crash in 1988. His eldest son and self-proclaimed heir to his political legacy, Ejaz ul-Haq, 38, easily won two seats in his first try at political office.

Zia’s 11-year military rule was marked by brutal public floggings, thousands of political prisoners, press censorship and suspension of civil liberties.

Bhutto’s own administration had little success in easing suspicion by the still-powerful army generals who form a shadow government for this nation of 110 million. The military has ruled Pakistan for 25 of its 43 years.

Critics said her inexperience, coupled with political ineptitude and rampant corruption, drained the large reservoir of public sympathy and goodwill that brought her to power.

“I suppose the lesson is people seem to have punished a populist government for letting them down,” analyst Lodhi said. “They’re harder on their own, since they don’t have such high expectations from the Establishment.”

Lodhi said she does not know whether Bhutto will be willing to sit as opposition leader under the new government.

“She’s got a tough time ahead,” she said. “It’s not easy to learn parliamentary politics in the opposition. She’s not cut out for that. She thinks she’s cut out to be number one.”