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Download PDF Pakistan’s military ruler Pervez Musharraf swept to re-election yesterday in a controversial presidential vote that might yet be snatched away by the Supreme Court.
Musharraf, a key US ally who seized power in the world’s only nuclear-armed Islamic nation in a 1999 coup, was voted in for another second five-year with an easy win over his token rivals.
But the embattled general must now await a decision by the Supreme Court, which said Friday that the winner cannot be officially declared until at least October 17 while it hears legal challenges.
“This is a very welcome result,” Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told reporters in parliament. “It is a historic day in the democratic history of Pakistan.”
Chief election commissioner Qazi Mohammad Farooq said a total of 257 votes were cast in the national assembly and senate, out of which Musharraf bagged 252 and three were rejected.
One rival, former judge Wajihdduin Ahmad, won two votes, he said. Another, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, vice-chairman of former premier Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, received none.
Opposition parties who make up nearly 30 percent of the electoral college, had resigned prior to the polls, while MPs from Bhutto’s party abstained.
Voting was also carried out in the four provincial assemblies. An official said Musharraf won “99 percent” of those votes in the provincial assemblies, although exact figures were still being calculated.
Anti-Musharraf protesters set fire to an armoured police vehicle and pelted the provincial parliament with stones in the northwestern city of Peshawar, while there were small protests in southern Karachi city.
The president, who is also army chief, had hoped for a smooth poll before his plan to restore civilian
rule to this chronically unstable country of 160 million people on the front line of the US-lead “war on terror.”
But the court, which has been at loggerheads with Musharraf since he tried to sack the chief justice in March, postponed the official result until it has resolved appeals against his eligibility and the legality of the vote itself.
The government however insisted Musharraf’s victory was valid.
“It is a clear-cut victory, legally, constitutionally, morally and politically,” Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid, one of Musharraf’s closest advisers, told AFP.
The president had bolstered his position Friday by giving Benazir an amnesty on graft charges. The move paves the way for a power-sharing deal ahead of her homecoming on October 18.
Benazir in turn withdrew a threat for her MPs to quit, a move that would have robbed the vote of legitimacy.
“We cannot vote for a president in uniform, we will abstain,” said presidential candidate Fahim.
The court decision means Musharraf could be still be disqualified weeks after the poll — heightening instability after months of turmoil and Islamist violence and possibly pushing the president towards martial law.
It could delay former commando Musharraf’s plans to shed his military role — a position he has said is vital for fighting al-Qaeda — and finally become a civilian ruler before he takes the oath of office.
He had promised to do so by November 15 when his term ends and was expected to do it much earlier, possibly by Monday, but may now feel he needs the army behind him in case of a hostile court ruling.
The transition to civilian rule is seen as a crucial step ahead of general elections that are due by early 2008.
Musharraf’s attempt to sack the chief justice badly damaged his popularity and sparked mass protests, and at the same time the country is also suffering extremist violence.
al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden urged Pakistanis in a recent video to rise up and wage holy war against Musharraf, sparking fears of a possible militant backlash during the election.
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