Maracaibo, next to the lake of the same name and the capital of Zulia, one of the regions hardest hit by the electricity crisis in Venezuela, is incubating a citizen initiative so that homes could be equipped with solar panels. Its example has spread to other regions of the country. CREDIT: Uria

By Humberto Márquez
MARACAIBO, Venezuela , Mar 25 2024 (IPS)

Sweating profusely, unable to sleep because of the heat, fed up with years of blackouts several times a day, many residents of Venezuela’s torrid northwest want to cover the roofs and balconies of their homes with solar panels, and are asking the government to import them massively and cheaply from China.

“It is a proposal to break out of the quagmire immediately, to close the gap between supply and demand for electricity, 60 percent of which in Venezuela goes to residential consumption,” engineer Lenin Cardozo, one of the main promoters of the Zulia Solar and Venezuela Solar citizen initiatives, told IPS."The solution to the electricity problem no longer lies in thermal plants, which in Venezuela we continue to repair while they are being closed down in other parts of the world, but in new sources and technologies, such as solar power." -- Lenin Cardozo

The northwestern state of Zulia, of which Maracaibo is the capital, produced Venezuela’s great oil wealth throughout the 20th century but has become, along with the neighboring Andes region, the Cinderella of the grid that supplies electricity, generated mainly in the distant southeast of the country, bordering Brazil.

Zulia Solar emerged last year as an association to foment solutions to the lack of electricity suffered by millions of inhabitants of the region. And so far in 2024, replicas have emerged in twenty other states, with aspirations of becoming a national movement: Venezuela Solar.

Its president, lawyer Vileana Meleán, said that “the novelty is that this time the citizens are organized and we are coordinating among ourselves to present the government with this solution that arises from civil society, with a three-point proposal.”

The first point is for the government to massively import solar panels from China, the world’s leading producer – with which Caracas has developed strong commercial and political ties – in order to obtain advantageous prices, and for it to organize a distribution system that makes them affordable to households interested in installing them.

The second is that, in order to lower prices, panels, batteries and other components of solar energy systems should be made exempt from various taxes, such as customs duties and the value added tax.

And the third point calls for the creation of a public and private financing policy, with soft loans, so that families of modest means can purchase the panels and other materials required for the new installation.

Power outages, in the form of sudden blackouts, surprise sectors of the cities of western Venezuela, such as the torrid city of Maracaibo. Local residents are fed up with suffering heat without the possibility of air conditioning or fans, the spoilage of food and damage to their household appliances. CREDIT: Transparencia Venezuela

The reason for the desperation

“When the electricity cuts off, the water goes out, the pumps don’t work. The food in the refrigerator spoils. During the day it is 40 or 42 degrees Celsius, but the thermal sensation reaches 47 degrees,” teacher Rita Zarate told IPS one afternoon in the hallway of her home in the working-class La Pomona neighborhood of Maracaibo.

In the last 24 hours the electricity had been cut three times, lasting between three and four hours each time.

For her family – mother, siblings, children, nieces and nephews – “the worst thing is not being able to sleep when the blackouts happen at night and in the early morning hours. In the bedroom, the heat is unbearable; outside, there are clouds of mosquitoes,” which swarm people in the house when the air conditioning or electric fans are turned off.

A sleepless night, trying to sleep when a breeze blows in the courtyard, keeping the elderly and little ones hydrated, and trying to get transportation to work at daybreak, which might not be available because the blackouts paralyze the fuel pumps and the owners of private vehicles spend hours waiting for the power to come back on so they can fill their tanks.

Zárate said that “it is the same for the children at school: classes two or three days a week, half a day, if they can run the fans. Or in the playground. Sometimes their parents leave them at home, other times the heat gets so bad that we have to send them back.”

Internet to study or to do work, to get administrative procedures done in offices, to operate ATMs in banks, to walk at night under street lights? These are options that are vanishing for those who live on the shores of Lake Maracaibo.

“In the last century Maracaibo was jokingly called ‘the coldest city in Venezuela’ because there was air conditioning everywhere. That’s not true anymore, they only work off and on now,” Luis Ramírez, director of the graduate program in quality systems at the private Andrés Bello Catholic University (Ucab), based in Caracas, told IPS.

He said that many homes in Zulia and the other 22 states outside Caracas have small gasoline-powered generators, but due to the scarcity of fuel – paradoxically, in the country that boasts the largest oil reserves on the planet – they are used less and less.

Zárate remains hopeful that change will come. But with regard to solar panels, he said that “I’ve heard about them, but it sounds like a distant solution,” and added that “one thing is for sure: with our income (every adult in his family earns less than 60 dollars a month) we won’t be able to afford them.”

Workers in a solar panel factory in China, by far the world’s largest producer. The Zulia and Venezuela Solar associations are asking the government to use its political and commercial ties with Beijing to negotiate a massive import of solar panels, and to make them affordable by eliminating taxes and granting soft loans. CREDIT: Xataka

Problems and hopes

Meleán proposed to her supporters in Zulia Solar and Venezuela Solar “to hold on now more tightly to the hope” that the acquisition and installation of solar panels will become widespread, based on a speech by President Nicolás Maduro, who is seeking reelection on Jul. 28 to a third six-year term.

At a Mar. 13 campaign rally, Maduro said that “the social movements have proposed a 2025-2030 plan for solar energy to reach the communal councils, the homes, the urban developments. It is one of the great solutions for the 21st century.”

At the end of the 20th century, Venezuela had a nominal installed generation capacity of 34,000 megawatt hours (MWh), including 18,000 MWh in thermal plants and 16,000 MWh in hydroelectric plants, and the peak demand of 18,000 MWh was reached in 1982.

From that year on, economic crises followed one after the other, reducing demand and the operability of the facilities. In the second decade of the 21st century, the country experienced a recession that cut GDP by four-fifths, while power plants and grids deteriorated until they generated no more than 10,000 MWh.

Experts put current demand at about 12,000 MWh, and the gap between supply and demand has led to energy rationing based on outages that affect almost the entire country – with the exception of Caracas – but especially the west, the region most distant from the southeastern Guri hydroelectric power plant, which generates two-thirds of the electricity consumed.

Zulia is barely surviving on what it receives from the Guri power plant and a dozen thermal power plants, which have deteriorated after being designed to be gas-fired and instead use diesel, contributing to their inefficiency and decline.

Cardozo said “the solution to the electricity problem no longer lies in thermal plants, which in Venezuela we continue to repair while they are being closed down in other parts of the world, but in new sources and technologies, such as solar power.”

Two thirds of Venezuela’s electricity depends on the Guri hydroelectric power plant in the southeast of the country. The distance and the poor state of the transmission and distribution networks result in supply failures in the western part of the country, fueling the search for alternatives such as solar panels in homes. CREDIT: Corpoelec

Venezuela “needs to incorporate technologies such as solar power, as an alternative to cover the gap between supply and demand in the short term, and with decentralized initiatives until large projects can move forward,” he said.

He added that a solar panel that costs 30 or 50 dollars in China, for example, depending on its capacity, sells for 10 times that in Venezuela, due to the costs and taxes along the supply chain.

Hence Venezuela Solar’s proposal for the government to intervene with massive purchases from its giant Asian partner, to abolish the taxes on their import and commercialization, and to facilitate financing for households.

Cardozo stressed that constant technological advances will make it possible not only to reduce the cost but also the size and complexity of domestic solar installations.

He estimated that a household could produce enough power for essential consumption with two 500-watt panels, and could run an air conditioner with four more, at a cost of about 1,000 dollars.

That would be the result if the government fully embraces Venezuela Solar’s proposals. The Zulia Solar group is preparing a pilot test in Maracaibo, with 400 houses that would have panels on their roofs and 100 apartments that would have panels on their balconies.

Solar panels supply energy to a health center in El Cruce, a remote village in the state of Zulia, in the far western part of the country, bordering Colombia. In the recent past, small hybrid wind and solar systems have been installed in isolated communities, but most have been lost due to lack of maintenance. CREDIT: ICRC

Not everything is positive

Representatives of companies that in the last three years have installed solar panels in homes and businesses in Venezuelan cities estimate costs of 4,000 dollars or more for an installation that meets the basic needs of a home.

In this country of 29 million inhabitants, the average salary is around 130 dollars per month, according to consulting firms. Measured by income level, 82 percent of households live in poverty and more than 50 percent in critical poverty, according to the Ucab Living Conditions Survey, released this month.

Ramírez pointed out that Maracaibo was not only the artificially coldest city in the country, but also the one with the highest electricity consumption per person, “and that is why aiming at a mass solution with solar panels on roofs and balconies requires a kind of prior census to estimate the real amount of equipment needed.”

Another expert, Alejandro López-González, told IPS that “Venezuela’s electricity problem will not be solved with solar panels on the roofs of homes in its big cities. It is not possible, because of our climate, which demands a high level of air conditioning.”

“If we turn to a complementary development of renewable energies, the ideal would be large solar and wind farms, because they provide higher energy intensity, for a greater capacity of use, and with a moderately centralized distribution system,” said López-González.

He argued that while the installation of panels in homes also complements local or regional grids, it falls short of solving the electricity crisis.

On the other hand, he noted that the assembly of solar panels began 14 years ago in Venezuela, in a state-owned plant that has worked intermittently but which could be reopened, while other factories could be built, if an agreement is reached with China for production and not only for imports.

In his book “Renewable Energíes in Venezuela. Experiences and lessons for a sustainable future”, López-González compares the country’s solar and wind potential.

This country’s solar power potential is among the highest in Latin America, with an average of 5.35 kilowatt hours per square meter per day (5.35 kWh/m2), close to the highest, in Chile (5.75) and Bolivia (5.42), according to studies by the Venezuelan University of Los Andes, based in the western Andean state of Mérida.

With respect to wind energy, in the northwest of the country alone, the potential reaches 12,000 MWh – similar to the capacity of Guri -, favored by trade winds with high levels of constancy, direction and speed, up to eight meters per second.

Venezuela also has the potential to develop solar farms and wind farms on its Caribbean islands and northeastern mainland coast to add thousands of MWh, which could limit thermal plants to a complementary status.

Between 10 and 15 years ago, the government installed up to 50 MWh of wind power generation and more than 2,000 small hybrid systems – solar and wind – through the “Sembrando luz” program, mainly in remote indigenous and peasant communities, which has been abandoned for the past decade.

Currently there are some isolated installations in several cities – mainly businesses – and small hybrid systems on livestock farms or large plantations, to ensure the refrigeration of products or to operate water wells.

Against this backdrop, with constant blackouts and as the country heads towards a new presidential election on Jul. 28, Venezuela and Zulia Solar activists are betting that their proposals will prosper.

“The country is beginning to rethink other ways to address its electricity security problem. The value and strategic use of solar energy has been incorporated into the public agenda as an immediate solution to overcome the current electricity crisis,” said Cardozo.

Roma community protest in the Serbian city of Nis after dozens of families in a settlement in the city had their electricity cut off. Credit: Opre Roma Srbija

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jan 5 2023 (IPS)

As European households brace for energy shortages this winter and leaders draw up support packages to help people heat homes in the coming months, experts fear that the largest minority on the continent, the Roma, will be left behind.

Many of the 12 million Roma in Europe have a low standard of living, and even before the energy crisis, energy poverty was rife among their communities.

Roma leaders and rights organisations say the current crisis has only deepened the problem and are calling for governments to ensure that one of the continent’s most vulnerable groups gets the help they need this winter and beyond.

“EU leaders and policymakers must ensure that energy policies already agreed, or any agreed in future, must be tailored and implemented in such a way that the most vulnerable, including the Roma, can access and benefit from them,” Zeljko Jovanovic, director of the Open Society Roma Initiatives Office at the Open Society Foundations (OSF), told IPS.

Roma living in Europe are among the most discriminated and disadvantaged groups on the continent. In many countries, significant numbers live in segregated settlements where living conditions are often poor, and extreme poverty is widespread.

Energy poverty is also common. It is estimated that at least 10% of the roughly 6 million Roma living in EU countries have no access to electricity at all.

Roma protest after electricity supplies to 24 families in the ‘12 February’ Roma settlement in the southern Serbian city of Nis was cut off over unpaid bills. There are calls for European countries to take into consideration the plight of the Roma during the energy crisis. Credit: Opre Roma Srbija

Meanwhile, where utilities are available, many struggle to afford them.

Rising energy prices this year have exacerbated the problem. But while governments have rolled out help in the form of one-off payments and other support for families and businesses to pay energy bills, this aid is often not filtering through to Roma despite the minority being among those most in need, say rights activists.

Unemployment in Roma communities is often high, with only one in four Roma aged 16 years or older reporting being employed, and many earn money working in the grey or black economies. But because of this, they often struggle with accessing state support schemes. This is especially true for measures approved to provide financial aid during the energy crisis.

“Even before the energy crisis, there was a problem with energy poverty in Europe, and for the Roma, this was even more so because so many were not in the formal system.

“Measures [approved] for the energy crisis are made for those in the formal system. Many Roma are not in that system – they are unemployed, or not formally registered, or earning money and paying into the social welfare system – so they cannot access those measures,” explained Jovanovic.

Roma NGOs working in some countries say they have already seen these problems.

In Romania, which has a Roma population of 1.85 million according to the Council of Europe, a programme to help the vulnerable with energy payments has been launched.

But Alin Banu, Community Organiser at the Aresel civic initiative, told IPS some Roma are unable to access it precisely because “they work in the grey or black economy and don’t have the right documentation of social insurance payments, wages etc.”.

Meanwhile, even those who are eligible for help are often being denied it, he claimed. He said that some municipalities had put conditions on receiving help to pay energy bills – for example, evidence of historical tax debt, or car ownership, makes an individual ineligible for the help.

The group says this is illegal.

“We have solved this problem in some cases, but most Roma will not complain about this because often they simply will not know it is illegal,” Balu said.

There are also concerns that other measures already adopted will actually make things worse for Roma.

Last year European leaders agreed on a non-binding goal for EU countries to reduce overall electricity demand by at least 10% by 31 March 2023, and a mandatory reduction of electricity consumption by 5% for at least 10% of high-demand hours each week.

Jovanovic fears that politicians’ first steps to save on energy consumption could involve simply cutting off power supplies to those not formally connected to the energy grid.

“Countries’ reductions in energy demand might come from cutting energy to those who do not have formal access to it, like the Roma,” said Jovanovic.

Nicu Dumitru, a Community Organiser at Arsesel, agreed – “the Roma would be the first to be cut off in that case,” he told IPS – but said that even if that does not happen, many Roma are already struggling with soaring energy costs.

Information collected by his group suggests that a fifth of all Roma households have had their electricity cut off since the start of the crisis because they cannot afford to pay. They are then connecting informally to the grid – usually through one person in their community who has a connection and who then charges high prices for others for use of that power – often borrowing money to do so, and worsening their already precarious financial situation.

There are an estimated over 400,000 people informally connected to the power grid in Romania, many of them Roma.

“The situation is getting critical for Roma,” Dumitru said.

Meanwhile, Roma activists in other countries are worried that politicians will use the energy crisis as an excuse to ignore long-term problems with energy poverty among the Roma or even as a justification to allow Roma settlements to be cut off from supplies.

In May this year, electricity supplies to 24 families in the ’12 February’ Roma settlement in the southern Serbian city of Nis were cut off over unpaid bills. The families claim this debt pre-dates their time living there, but the local power distributor demanded proof of house ownership from the families before reconnection.

People in many Roma settlements often lack such documents as the process for obtaining them is costly and difficult for many to navigate without expert legal help, and none of these families was able to provide the required proof.

It was only after both local and nationwide protests by members of the community themselves and negotiations between the families, who were represented by the Opre Roma Serbia rights group, local authorities, and the local distributor Elektrodistribucija Nis, that in December, limited supplies of electricity were restored to the families involved.

Jelena Reljic of Opre Roma Serbia said she was pleased those affected could now access electricity again but warned “the situation in this settlement is an example of a much wider systemic problem” which politicians are not doing enough to solve.

“The last cut off in this settlement was because of historic debt, but the problems with electricity [there] have been going on for a decade. Politicians are relying on being able to cut Roma settlements off from electricity during the energy crisis without too much public outrage or resistance. Around 99% of the reaction we have seen to the problem in this settlement has been of the type ‘oh, no one should be getting energy free during this crisis, we pay, so why shouldn’t they?’” she told IPS.

“Politicians are using the energy crisis to cover up the fact that they have never dealt with the problem of energy poverty for years and years,” she added.

The OSF’s Jovanovic wants European policymakers to review their proposed help during the crisis, including not just the approved reductions in energy demand but plans for energy price caps and a solidarity levy on the profits of businesses active in the oil, natural gas, coal, and refinery sectors.

He said the 5% reduction must not lead to electricity cuts for those already in energy poverty and that public revenues from the energy cap and solidarity levy – estimated at €140bn within the EU – should be redistributed along principles that are both morally and macroeconomically justified.

He has been involved in high-level EU committee meetings on energy crisis support policies, but, he told IPS, at those meetings, there seemed to be “little idea of the perspective of Roma and other vulnerable groups and how they would cope in the crisis”.

Now he and other activists are trying to arrange further talks with EU and national policymakers to urge them to address shortcomings in current policies affecting vulnerable groups, including Roma.

“We want to raise these issues,” he said.

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Zimbabwe's power consumption has been growing and the country continues to import electricity to supplement local production. Credit: Michelle Chifamba/IPS

By Michelle Chifamba
HARARE, Sep 26 2013 (IPS)

On top of a small wooden cabin in Norton, a dormitory town outside the capital of Zimbabwe, is a solar panel that Silvester Ngunzi uses to light up his household.

Amid the darkness that has pervaded his neighbourhood and the rest of the country sometimes for 24 hours a day over the past decade, due to recurring power outages, Ngunzi and others have turned to solar energy – hailed as clean and readily available – as an alternative source of energy.

According to the Zimbabwe Power Company, the leading generator of electrical energy in Zimbabwe, the country has an average power deficit of 600 megawatts (MW) due to obsolete machinery and limited investment in the energy sector.

Energy specialists insist on the need for a clear policy framework that supports the development of clean sources like solar energy.

“Zimbabwe is a developing country which has been struggling with power generation for more than a decade. The country should therefore start exploiting effective and efficient cleaner renewable energies,” energy expert Philimon Nyikadzino told IPS.

“Although the market for solar energy development is vast in a country like Zimbabwe that has abundant sunlight, the energy is underutilised. Statistics released in 2012 by the Energy Commission show that the energy balance is 51 percent for wood fuel, 19 percent for coal, 12 percent for liquid fuel, 13 percent for electricity and 5 percent for solar energy,” Nyikadzino added.

For the past decade, Zimbabweans have been facing severe, chronic power outages in which they have become accustomed to darkness in their homes and at work.

“This is by far the best investment I have ever made,” Ngunzi told IPS. “The ongoing power outages make my heart bleed. I have resorted to solar energy for lighting and a gas cooker for cooking. In these desperate times we have to come up with innovative ways to curb the power deficit affecting the country.”

“Candlelit nights have become part of our daily lives as we grapple with our homework in the darkness of the night,” fifteen-year-old Batsirai Muzondo from Glaudina Park, Harare, told IPS.

But Zimbabweans across the country’s four provinces seem to have gradually found alternative ways to deal with the expanding power deficit.

“From the break of dawn to dusk power outages are our daily bread, and the power utility companies seem not to take heed of our plight,” Muzondo added.

Over the last five years, Chinese-made solar panels and diesel-powered generators have slowly trickled into the country.

Shop owners in Harare who sell the solar panels and generators say business has been brisk.

Both rural people and urbanites have been flooding the shops purchasing the products, which range from 20 dollars for a small solar panel that provides lighting and powers small appliances such as television sets, and from 80 dollars for a small generator.

“The solar panels and generators have come as a relief to most Zimbabweans,” Petros Dowani, a businessman in Harare’s central business district, told IPS. “Many informal business people and individuals have invested in the products to address the power challenges.

“When I ventured into the business five years ago, I used to go to China and purchase more than 300 solar panels and 100 power generators every fortnight.”

Welders and hair salons in Harare’s home-based industrial sites, as well as bottle-stores and night clubs in residential areas like Glen View, Warren Park, Ruwa and Mabvuku in Harare have resorted to generators to run their businesses.

Lamerk Mandizvidza, owns a bottle-store and butchery in Warren Park. He says the outages have been affecting his perishable meat business as he can go for almost a week without electricity.

“It is more economical to use generators in place of electricity because five litres of diesel costs less that 10 dollars yet it lasts more than a week. Every month I can use 40 dollars for diesel compared to the 100-dollar electricity bills per month I used to pay,” Mandizvidza told IPS.

Wheat farmers have lamented the continued blackouts that impact their production as they need electricity to irrigate their winter crop. As a result, yields have fallen short in recent years.

“Power outages come at a critical time as most of the crop in the fields will be reaching the flowering stage that needs constant irrigation which uses electricity to power the irrigation pumps,” Poterayi Ngarambi, a resettled farmer in Shurugwi, Midlands Province, told IPS. “Since most of the irrigation water has to be pumped from dams and wells, power outages seriously threaten winter wheat production.”

Economists say the government should find innovative solutions like solar power irrigation.

“It is ambitious for the country and the power companies to come up with innovative ways like solar power to improve the power supply that has been affecting the country,” Harare-based independent economic analyst Rudolf Phiri told IPS.

The Zimbabwe Power Company announced plans in June for a 100 MW solar power project in Gwanda Matabeleland province and Zvishavane, Masvingo province, as part of the efforts to boost the country’s power supply.

According to former energy minister Elton Mangoma, sites for new 100 MW solar projects have been identified in Gwanda in Matabeleland and Zvishavane in Masvingo Province.

The Harare Institute of Technology (HIT), Technical College, Harare commissioned a solar water heating system in March.

The Pilot Public Solar Water Heating System Project was funded by the government of South Korea through the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) working in collaboration with the Ministries of Energy and Power Development, Public Works, and Higher and Tertiary Education.

KOICA installed two solar water heating systems in the pilot phase, one at the Harare Institute of Technology and another at the United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH), heating 15,000 and 13,000 litres respectively. The one at UBH also provides space heating for incubators in the maternity ward.

“Zimbabwe is in one of the best solar radiation belts in the world, averaging 2,100 kilowatt hours per square metre per year and 3,000 hours, equivalent to 300 days of sunshine per year. However, this resource is currently under-utilised,” Evans Mushongera, a technological researcher with HIT, told IPS.

“Solar Technology requires that solar energy be produced and stored during the day for use at night and this makes it more expensive. Our situation in Zimbabwe is that electricity is short during the day so there is no need to produce and store,” Mushongera added.

Some voters waited in line for up to eight hours to cast their ballots on May 11. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim, Irfan Ahmed, and Ashfaq Yusufzai
LAHORE, May 13 2013 (IPS)

Flanked by loyalists, friends, journalists and excited family members, former Pakistani premier Mian Nawaz Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), seemed relaxed on the night of the May 11 general elections.

With a remote control in his hand, he sat back on a soft leather sofa in the heavily guarded executive room of the party’s headquarters in Model Town, Lahore, and scanned TV channels to find the most current results.

Outside, hundreds of raucous PML-N supporters, crowded around giant screens erected for the public, cheered loudly every time a favourable result was announced.

The party and its loyalists had good reason to celebrate. Before the night was over, it was clear that the PML-N had won an overwhelming number of votes in Punjab, the country’s most populous province, which accounts for 148 out of 272 National Assembly seats.

By Monday morning, though several provinces’ votes had yet to be counted, congratulations for the prime minister-in-waiting had already come in from neighbouring India, and from Pakistan’s closest western ally, the United States.

Watershed moment

This past weekend’s elections marked a watershed moment in Pakistan’s history. Accustomed to long periods of military rule, generally imposed via coup d’état, the country has not experienced a proper democratic transition since 1962.

This year, fears were running high that the Taliban would follow through on its May 1 warning that it would bomb all the polling stations to prove its disdain for the “system of infidels, which is called democracy.”

The lead-up to Election Day was marred by violence, with 121 people lying dead by the time campaigning closed 48 hours ahead of voting.

In Karachi, tensions between rival groups like the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), led by former cricket legend Imran Khan, hung thick in the air, with analysts predicting bloody skirmishes at polling stations.

The caretaker government, meanwhile, dispatched over 70,000 troops onto the streets to ensure that peace and order prevailed.

The day began with a bomb blast in eastern Karachi’s Landhi area, killing 11 and injuring over 40. Despite this initial tragedy, it quickly became clear that the mood among the people was not one of violence and terror, but of enthusiasm and camaraderie.

Defying all threats by the Taliban and intimidation by armed political activists, voters came out in droves, determined to cast their ballots.

The Election Commission of Pakistan reported a voter turnout of 62 to 70 percent, the highest ever in this country of over 170 million.

Heartening sights such as a man being carried into a polling booth on a stretcher caused people to “burst out in applause,” tweeted Kamal Siddiqi, editor of the English daily ‘Express Tribune’.

Indeed, many of those out on the streets said they were casting the vote for the very first time. “I had never bothered before; but this time I am completely mobilised,” a woman in her early fifties, waiting patiently in a long queue in a school-turned-polling station in the affluent Clifton area, told IPS.

Not far away, in Karachi’s Defence Housing Authority, 48-year old homemaker Tarrannum Lakda was frustrated by the eight-hour wait to cast her vote but she refused to call it a day – she wanted her voice to be counted in this historic election, she told IPS.

Still, the voting process was not without its flaws.

As Lakda stood in the sun, the presiding election officer ventured out to inform the waiting citizens that the ballot papers, boxes, voter lists and stamps had still not arrived.

Similar hold-ups were experienced across the city. Analysts and election observers have blamed the MQM for engineering delays in a bid to deter the PTI’s urban youth base, many of them first-time voters, drawn to Khan’s condemnation of drone strikes in the country’s tribal belt and his vow to end corruption.

Various sources told IPS that pre-poll rigging had begun the night before.

“My mother is a government teacher in a school in Bufferzone (an MQM stronghold) who was appointed to report for election duty,” a youth living in the area told IPS under condition of anonymity. “But on Election Day she was informed not to report for duty as she would be replaced by someone else.”

Other anomalies included MQM members entering the Nazimabad area and confiscating students’ identity cards, or “forcing residents to vote for them”, a local student who did not want to be named told IPS.

Five religious parties – the Jamaat-i-Islami, Sunni Tehrik, Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan, the Sunni Ittehad Council and the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (Haqiqi) – pulled out of the race on Saturday, alluding to “irregularities and poll rigging” in Karachi. For its part, the MQM also “boycotted” the polls in a few constituencies, citing the very same reasons.

Across Pakistan, election violence claimed a total of 38 lives, with over 150 injured.

Taliban stronghold takes a turn

While rival parties battled it out in the southern Sindh province, and Sharif and his supporters basked in their glory in the eastern Punjab province, it was the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province that really expressed a desire for change.

Devastated by the ongoing militancy and fed up with living under the Taliban’s boot, KP residents turned out in droves, buoyed by the presence of scores of PTI workers on the streets, monitoring the poll stations, encouraging voters to come out of their homes, and generally livening up a process that had promised to be, at best, dull and at worst deadly.

Unlike in previous election years, plenty of women were seen at polling stations in cities like Mardan and Peshawar.

By the end of the day the PTI had bagged 32 out of a total of 124 seats, becoming the largest political party in the province. Many senior politicians like ANP Chief Asfandyar Wali Khan, former KP Chief Minister Ameer Khan Hoti and former Federal Minister Ameer Madam lost to new candidates fielded by the PTI.

Though the party suffered huge defeats in Pakistan’s three other provinces and at the federal level, PTI activists flooded the streets and held processions in KP’s capital Peshawar to celebrate their victory in the north.

The climate was much less joyful in the adjacent Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where most people failed to cast votes for the region’s 12 National Assembly seats.

The PTI is now poised to form a provincial government in the violence-wracked northwest with the Jamaat-i-Islam, though Khan has announced his intention to go into opposition at a national level.

According to Al Jazeera English, Khan said Sunday that the mark of a strong democracy is a “strong opposition”, which has been missing in Pakistan for ten years.

Looking ahead

Analysts say Pakistan must now look beyond the elections, and its prime minister-in-waiting must set his eyes on the many challenges that lie ahead, such as tackling terrorism and solving the energy crisis that has crippled the country: according to some estimates, Pakistan faces a shortfall of more than 7,000 megwatts, or 40 percent of total electricity demand.

Salman Abid, a political analyst based in Lahore, told IPS that relations with the United States and Afghanistan in the context of NATO’s withdrawal in 2014, peace talks with the Taliban, relations with India, increasing foreign investment and solving unemployment will be the new government’s priorities.

“The victory in elections may be a milestone,” he said, but the party has a long way to go before reaching its desired destination.

Tanvir Shahzad, a Lahore-based journalist, stressed that the PML-N must not fail to deliver its promises on incorporating youth into the country’s development, reducing poverty and ending load shedding.

*Irfan Ahmed contributed to this report from Lahore, Zofeen Ebrahim from Karachi and Ashfaq Yusufzai from Peshawar.