NYT : Musharraf Files Papers for Election in Pakistan

Musharraf Files Papers for Election in Pakistan

By CARLOTTA GALL and SALMAN MASOOD | September 28, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 27 — Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, filed his nomination papers for re-election on Thursday amid continuing uncertainty over his eligibility to compete in the Oct. 6 vote.

On Friday, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on two petitions challenging General Musharraf’s eligibility on the grounds that is it unconstitutional for him to serve as both president and chief of the army staff.

Two senior lawyers close to the case said they were prepared for the court to return a verdict in General Musharraf’s favor. But even if it did, lawyers and political parties said they were gearing up to make further legal challenges over the next week in a last-ditch effort to derail the election. An opposition alliance, the All Parties Democratic Movement, upped the ante on Thursday by announcing that its members would resign en masse from the national and provincial assemblies that will hold the presidential election.

The move, which the opposition hoped would undercut the credibility of the vote, would take place on Tuesday, just four days before the election. It could force the provincial assembly and government in the North-West Frontier Province to dissolve, leaving the electoral college incomplete.

Meanwhile, General Musharraf’s supporters in the governing coalition say he has enough seats in the various assemblies to secure his victory.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, flanked by other ministers, delivered the papers nominating General Musharraf, 64, on behalf of the president to the election commission.

“We fully believe that President General Pervez Musharraf, who is candidate of the P.M.L. and allied parties, will succeed,” Mr. Aziz said, referring to the Pakistan Muslim League, the state news agency reported.

So far, General Musharraf faces two opponents: a former Supreme Court judge, Wajihuddin Ahmed, 68, who is backed by the lawyers campaigning against military rule; and Makhdoom Amin Fahim, the vice chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party, which is led by the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Mr. Ahmed’s candidacy is aimed at raising constitutional objections, and he may withdraw before the vote, lawyers said.

He was one of six Supreme Court judges who resigned in January 2000 rather than take an oath of allegiance to General Musharraf, who had seized power in a coup just three months before.

“It was contrary to the constitutional oath,” Mr. Ahmed said in a recent interview from his home in Karachi before traveling to the capital, Islamabad. “In my view it was defiling the Constitution.”

He would challenge the general’s eligibility to run before the election commission, he said, because a military officer is not permitted to run for political office.

He said he would also challenge the validity of Parliament, which is about to finish its own term, to elect a president for a five-year term.

Meanwhile, the opposition lawyer, Aitzaz Ahsan, who is one of three lawyers acting as constitutional advisers to the Supreme Court, argued on Wednesday and Thursday that the court should focus on whether General Musharraf’s candidacy was unconstitutional, because he is a member of the armed forces.

“Being an army chief, General Musharraf cannot contest presidential elections; he cannot file the nomination papers,” Mr. Ahsan told the court.

Syed Mohammed Zafar, a member of the governing party who is advising the court, said in an interview that General Musharraf had made an important concession by promising to resign his military post if he wins the election.

Mr. Zafar, who is also an adviser to General Musharraf, has been calling for the president to resign his military post since 2004. This time, he said, he believed that the general would do so and that the Supreme Court should let the election go ahead, because having a military leader voluntarily step down would set an important precedent.

“Pakistan has very recently emerged from a period of constitutional deviation, and the best option is to allow the transition to proceed smoothly,” he told the court on Wednesday.

Mr. Zafar added that the president should give up his military post if re-elected. ‘This is a constitutional requirement,” he said.

The government, for its part, has maintained that General Musharraf can hold both posts and that the election should proceed.

Malik Muhammad Qayyum, the attorney general, urged the court to throw out petitions filed by the opposition politicians Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Imran Khan. He argued that all the objections raised in the petitions had already been settled in General Musharraf’s favor by the Supreme Court in two cases in 2002 and 2005. “They are trying to flog a dead horse,” Mr. Qayyum said.

The judges, in their comments, often appeared reluctant to carry the burden of what was essentially the work of Parliament.

Hamid Khan, the lawyer representing Mr. Khan, the opposition politician, several times called Parliament a “rubber-stamp Parliament, a lame duck.”

That prompted a sharp retort from Justice Javed Iqbal: “If it is a lame duck,” he said, “how can the Supreme Court turn it into a lion?”

On Thursday, in a separate case, the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, ordered the government to release all opposition political activists who had been arrested in recent days.

The Pakistani authorities recently detained more than 100 opposition workers, including some leading politicians, according to officials, to stop them from organizing protests outside the court.