Pakistani Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz easily won a seat in parliament, clearing the way for him to take over as prime minister next week, officials said on Thursday.

Aziz, a former Citibank executive, bagged 76,161 votes against 29,443 for his main opponent in Attock district of central Punjab province, where he narrowly survived a suicide bombing on July 30, an Election Commission official said.

His driver and eight others were killed in the attack that officials have linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, which is bent on deposing President Pervez Musharraf for his support for the US-led war on terror.

Aziz, 55, who Musharraf picked to be prime minister in June after the abrupt resignation of the incumbent, also trounced his opponent in a second by-election in Tharparkar the southern province of Sindh. Legislators from the two constituencies resigned to give Aziz a chance at a seat in the lower house of parliament, which is a prerequisite to be prime minister.

Candidates can win multiple seats in the National Assembly, but can retain only one.

The results of Wednesday's voting are unofficial and will formally announced later in the week.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told reporters Aziz would form a new government next week. "I expect a new government to be formed between the 22nd and 25th of this month," he said. "The election was peaceful."

However, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) of exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto accused the government of rigging the elections and intimidation, after three of its activists were killed on Monday in a drive-by shooting near Attock.

"The PPP will soon publish a white paper on how the elections were stolen," party spokesman Farhatullah Babur told Reuters.

Rights group has reservations

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan expressed some reservations about the election process although it also said that polling was largely peaceful and their teams did not notice any serious breach of election procedures.

"The people witnessed a process that did not quite amount to a free and fair expression of the voters' will," it said in a statement. "There were many complaints of use of government resources and pressure in favor of the official candidate."

A major focus for Aziz's government is likely to be Pakistan's crackdown on al Qaeda and local Islamic militant groups, as the government seeks to sever ties between the military and Islamic radicals that go back decades.

Musharraf still wields ultimate authority, even after restoring parliament after elections two years ago. He retains the power to fire the prime minister and dissolve parliament.

Political columnist Nasir Zehra wrote in The News Daily that Aziz would be tasked with ensuring better governance, day-to-day running of the federal bureaucracy, and overseeing the more effective execution of policy.

Political affairs will be managed by Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, who has been filling in as a temporary prime minister, while Musharraf would continue with his "highly controversial" re-engineering of Pakistan's political landscape, Zehra wrote.

Aziz's victory was hailed by stock market players.

"Shaukat Aziz has been a wonderful finance manager for Pakistan and the best polices have come in his tenure, and now if he is becoming the prime minister, the economy will get a boost and the market will rise," said Shuja Rizvi, head of institutional sales at Capital One Equities.

Aziz has steered a sharp turnaround in Pakistan's financial fortunes since taking charge after Musharraf's 1999 military coup when the country was virtually bankrupt under sanctions imposed a year earlier over the country's testing of nuclear weapons.

(China Daily via Agencies August 20, 2004)