IHT : Musharraf wins Pakistan vote, but his future is still in doubt

Musharraf wins Pakistan vote, but his future is still in doubt

By Carlotta Gall | October 6, 2007

ISLAMABAD: President Pervez Musharraf easily won the presidential election on 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.

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.

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 said.

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 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 Musharraf's eight years of military rule on constitutional grounds, and all the main opposition parties, are backing the legal challenges.

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 that 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 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 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 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 Musharraf's advantage. Some 80 members of opposition parties resigned their Parliament seats earlier in the week in protest at Musharraf's standing for election while still holding the post of chief of army staff but 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," Chaudhry said.

Members of the National Assembly and the Senate, including cabinet ministers, gathered in the main parliamentary chamber in the capital at 10 a.m. to answer a roll call and cast their ballots in a clear plastic box on the speaker's table. The unofficial count was announced by 4 p.m.

Bhutto's party members were present for early business Saturday morning but walked out as the chamber was being prepared for the vote. "The whole party boycotted," Sherry Rehman, spokeswoman for the party, said. "We had said we are not going to legitimize a process we have opposed in the courts. We do not endorse the election of a military man as president."

Coming just a day after successfully negotiating an amnesty bill with the government that will allow Bhutto to return to Pakistan later this month to contest parliamentary elections, her party's protest appeared as a token protest.

"Only a few hours ago they were negotiating with the president and now they suddenly remember his uniform," the state minister for information, Tari Azim Khan, said. "They have selective memory loss."

Opposition parties did not mount any protest and a call for a general strike received a lukewarm response in the capital. Only two dozen protesters gathered to protest outside the parliament, shouting, "This election is a fraud" and "Go Musharraf, Go."

"We may not be able to stop this farce from happening but we can certainly register our opposition," said Asim Sajjad Akhtar, an activist from Peoples Rights Movement, a independent political movement. "We are against this election because it is totally illegal. It is totally illegitimate. It is totally against the wishes of the people of Pakistan."

Akhtar said that in his view a majority of the people of Pakistan were against military rule even if they did not come out on the streets to protest.

"This election is a farce. It is a bid to perpetuate authoritarian rule," I.A Rahman from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent group, said while standing in front of Parliament. "All those who are voting and taking part today, they are just trying to prop up an undemocratic regime."

The provincial assemblies also returned a clear victory for Musharraf with so few votes going to his opponent Ahmed that they did not register in the electoral college. In the North West Frontier Province, where opposition parties hold a majority, the boycott meant only a quarter of the elected members voted.

Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad and Ismail Khan from Peshawar.