Musharraf wins vote, but court will have final say

FE Team | Published: October 07, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

ISLAMABAD (Pakistan), Oct 6: President Pervez Musharraf easily won the presidential election Saturday, but an opposition boycott and pending hearings in the Supreme Court, which still has to decide on his eligibility to stand for election in uniform, left him with an incomplete victory, said the New York Times.
The vote, by national and provincial assemblies, ended up as a one-man race after other candidates withdrew. All opposition parties refused to take part and only legislators from the ruling coalition, plus a few independents voted.
General Musharraf won 252 votes in the National Assembly and Senate while one of his opponents, a former Supreme Court judge, Wajihuddin Ahmed, won two votes, the chief election commissioner, Qazi Muhammad Farooq, announced in the national parliament. The provincial assemblies returned similarly clear margins.
"This is a very welcome result," Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told reporters in parliament.
General Musharraf had been widely expected to win the vote because the government coalition holds a majority in all but one provincial assembly. But the election will be recognized only if the Supreme Court, which is hearing challenges to General Musharraf's participation in the election later this month, rules in his favor.
Two of his opponents have raised constitutional objections to him being elected by the outgoing assemblies, running for what is in effect a third presidential term, and running for elected office while still holding the post of chief of army staff. The lawyers movement, which has opposed General Musharraf's eight years of military rule on constitutional grounds, and all the main opposition parties, are backing the legal challenges.
General Musharraf, who seized power in October 1999, has always struggled against accusations that his leadership is illegitimate. He first led the country as chief executive, then in 2002 sought an election by referendum which was widely criticized for being rigged. He won a vote of confidence by the electoral college in January 2004 allowing him to continue as president until November 2007.
Yet he clearly still commands a majority in the elected assemblies, and disquiet among members of the ruling party melted away on the day.
The former minister of tourism, Nilofar Bakhtiar, who had said she would not vote for General Musharraf if he remained in uniform, said his recent promise to the Supreme Court that he would resign his military post after the election had satisfied her. "I am here only because he said he would take off his uniform," she said. "He will take the oath in a suit."
She added that she believed the general would also respect the Supreme Court if it ruled against him. "If the court goes against him, he will quietly quit. He has the courage to do that," she said.
She and other women parliamentarians said they supported General Musharraf for his promotion of women. "He has the qualities to make changes in our society," she said.
"He is the only candidate, so definitely he will win," Aijax Ahmed Chaudhry, a legislator form the ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, said. "You cannot say that the legality or popularity is a problem. It was clear from the numbers, that our party, the PMLQ, that we have the numbers."
The election passed with barely a hitch with only a token protest from demonstrators in the capital, and a walkout by members of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party. A group of lawyers staged a demonstration outside the assembly in the North West Frontier Province, burning an effigy of General Musharraf and attacking an armored police vehicle with sticks after it ran over the feet of two senior lawyers.
Divisions within the opposition parties played to General Musharraf's advantage. Some 80 members of opposition parties resigned their parliament seats earlier in the week in protest at General Musharraf's standing for election while still holding the post of chief of army staff but Ms. Bhutto's party, which has been negotiating a power sharing deal with General Musharraf, chose only to abstain from the vote, preventing an attempt to declare the vote invalid.
"The PPP is part of the government - they are on board," Mr Chaudhry said.