Karachi, December 6. Pakistan will attempt tomorrow to recapture its lost status as the world's third largest democracy. It is a challenge to the “highest patriotism ”, according to the chief election commissioner. It is also a signal for prudent precautions : the army is out in force at every polling booth and 200 casualty beds held ready in Karachi hospitals.

The scale of exercise is truly daunting; 56,500,000 voters, 30,000 polling booths, 330,000 polling officials, 313 seats to be filled , 23 parties, and over 300 independents after them. Not to mention television and radio coverage that might turn David Frost green - 29 hours of non-stop television (with satire, drama, pop songs, and all the comment you can snatch) plus 30 hours of the same radio mixture. The news that a leading BBC current affairs figure, John Grist, has been giving advice on this media orgy can be treated either as a threat or a promise.

Pakistan’s willing David Butlers, however, are going to find the going convoluted: no swings because there have never been one-man one-vote elections before, but plenty of roundabouts because party policies blur hopelessly in a whirl of rhetoric. Only this morning a far Right Islamic candidate announced he was changing tickets - to a far Left non-Islamic party, rather as though Enoch Powell had decided to stand as Labour candidate for Bradford.

Wishful thinking

In fact there are no solid forecasts and every so-called independent assessment is bathed in wish fulfillment. For instance, where two battling frontier parties are struggling in a relatively straight and simple fight for the tribal North-West Pakistan’s pundits divide about 50-50. Nevertheless, Government and diplomatic observers will be sitting up through tomorrow night looking for two main trends. First, the size of the majority run up in East Pakistan by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s quasi-nationalistic Awami League. There are 162 seats in the East (out of 300 operatively being fought since the remaining 13 are reserved in voting proportions for women only). Mujib watchers give him between 110 and the 151 he would need to hold a National Assembly majority with coalitions.

In the East his triumph seems certain. From the West that likelihood increases, too, as daily, droves of rival candidates withdraw from the lists. Ostensibly this gesture demonstrate their tender susceptibilities, a refusal to participate in crude politics while a nation mourns the cyclone dead. In fact is taken here as a shrewd admission that he who knows he is doomed to loose takes to the moralising boats. The diplomatic observers would be happy to see him do well but not well enough to go it alone; some sort of forced alliances are vital they think if Pakistan’s essay in freedom is to endure much longer than the first crowing of total arrogant victory.

The second main interest, especially in the West, centres on Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, lately Foreign Minister to Field Marshal Ayub Khan and currently leader of the Pakistan People’s Party proponents of “Islamic socialism” and pandemonium. Mr. Bhutto’s campaign has been unique in Pakistan history: a bland, youthful panache and antique cunning. Socialism is a magic word to the slum-bound masses. Mr. Bhutto, flitting from town to town by plane and promising everything from Pakistan’s own nuclear bomb to all-out war on decadent imperialism, has probably picked up enough votes to carry Karachi and much of Sind provinces. The big question is how he fares out in the sticks where feudalism still reigns supreme and the largest local landlord gets elected - a contingency the revolutionary Bhutto, a landlord and standing for six different seats himself, has catered for by recruiting a whole bevy of dubiously Socialist feudal giants to- his red and green banner.

If he makes a good showing, what will he do? Ministers in Islamabad consider Bhutto a total reprobate. One former close friend thinks that his quest for power is so committed and (in exaggeration of the usual Pakistan politician’s position) so completely devoid of any real ideological belief that “this man could be the new Fuhrer - much worse than Ayub was.”

Unknown factors

The intriguing thing is that nobody knows what Bhutto thinks or how many votes he will poll; or whether this champion of strong central government - preferably led by himself - will briskly do a carve-up with the regional Mujib and emerge in Ministerial plumage once again. One major upset could tear up Mr. Bhutto’s scenarios for success, and that upset is being strongly rumoured here tonight: defeat in his own home town of Larkana. Mr. Bhutto is facing another famous politician-cum-landlord and also, it is reported, an influx of fierce nomadic tribesmen who dislike him and are not averse to spot intimidation.

At any rate, after 29 hours of mind-boggling Pakistani television, we will soon begin to know the answers - as well, perhaps, as the fate of the leading municipal worker who has just portentously announced that he is quitting to take up politics. He is joining the Muslim League, he says. But there are three of them and “I’m not yet sure which one.”