NYT : Boycotts and Legal Fight Cloud Victory for Musharraf

Boycotts and Legal Fight Cloud Victory for Musharraf

By CARLOTTA GALL | October 7, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 6 — Gen. Pervez Musharraf easily won the election for president on Saturday, but an opposition boycott and pending hearings in the Supreme Court, which still has to decide on his eligibility to run 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.

General Musharraf won 98 percent of votes — 671 of the total of 685 ballots cast in the national and provincial assemblies were for him, and 8 were for one of his opponents, Wajihuddin Ahmed, a former Supreme Court judge. Under the electoral college system, General Musharraf got 384 votes of 702, more than 50 percent of the electoral college, according to unofficial calculations.

“This is a very welcome result,” the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, told reporters in Parliament.

General Musharraf had been widely expected to be re-elected as 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 later this month to General Musharraf’s participation in the election, rules in his favor.

Two of his opponents have raised constitutional objections to his being elected by the outgoing assemblies, seeking what is in effect a third term as president and running for elected office while still holding the position of chief of army staff. Opposition lawyers, who have opposed General Musharraf’s eight years of military rule on constitutional grounds, and all the main opposition parties are supporting the legal challenges.

General Musharraf, who seized power in a military coup in October 1999, has always struggled against accusations that his leadership is illegitimate. He first led the country as chief executive. Then in 2002 he 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; that allowed him to continue as president through a term that expires next month.

Yet he clearly still commands a majority in the elected assemblies, and disquiet among members of the ruling party melted away on election day.

The former minister of tourism, Nilofer 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 Saturday. “He will take the oath in a suit.”

She said she believed that the general would also respect the Supreme Court if it ruled against him. “If the court goes against him, he will quietly quit,” she said. “He has the courage to do that.”

She and other members of Parliament who are women said they supported General Musharraf for his promotion of women. “He has the qualities to make changes in our society,” she said.

Farooq Sattar, a parliamentary leader of the Muttahida National Movement, best known by its Urdu language abbreviation, the M.Q.M., said his party, which is a partner of the governing coalition, was voting for General Musharraf for his stance on terrorism and his macro-economic achievements. “We are voting for the continuity of stability and the democratic process,” he said.

“He is the only candidate, so definitely he will win,” said Aijax Ahmed Chaudhry, a legislator from the ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League.

“You cannot say that the legality or popularity is a problem,” he said.

The election passed with barely a hitch. There was only a token protest from demonstrators in the capital, and a walkout by members of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the party of a former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. 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 of General Musharraf’s running for re-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.

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 ballots in a clear plastic box on the speaker’s table. The unofficial count was announced by 4 p.m.

Supporters of General Musharraf were out celebrating Saturday night with fireworks and banners in front of the Parliament building.

Ms. Bhutto’s party members were present for business on Saturday morning, but they walked out as the chamber was being prepared for the vote. “The whole party boycotted,” Sherry Rehman, a 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 Ms. Bhutto to return to Pakistan later this month to contest parliamentary elections, her party’s protest appeared to be a token demonstration.

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

A call for a general strike received a lukewarm response. 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 the People’s Rights Movement, an independent political organization. “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.”

Mr. Akhtar said he believed that a majority of Pakistanis were against military rule even if they did not come out to protest.

I. A. Rahman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said while standing in front of Parliament: “This election is a farce; it is a bid to perpetuate authoritarian rule 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 win for General Musharraf, with so few votes going to his opponent Mr. 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, Pakistan, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan.