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Announcements next week: Musharraf

Nirupama Subramanian

Islamabad: President Pervez Musharraf said on Friday he would make important announcements after a meeting of the National Security Council next week.

Talking at the National Defence University here, President Musharraf said he had convened a meeting of the NSC and would address the nation to take the people into confidence on important decisions relating to national issues.

According to the official Associated Press of Pakistan, he gave no dates. The NSC is chaired by the President, and includes the Prime Minister, chairman of the Senate, Speaker of the National Assembly, leader of the Opposition, the four chief ministers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and the three service chiefs.

Much significance is being attached to President Musharraf’s remarks in the context of the prevailing political unrest in the country following the decision to fire Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary, a move that has badly backfired.

The NSC meeting will take place amidst reports that President Musharraf has abandoned an earlier plan to get re-elected by the sitting parliament and provincial assemblies in September-October, weeks before their terms draw to an end in November, and is instead considering calling early national elections.

The embattled President is reportedly considering this plan as one way to defuse his seven-year rule’s biggest crisis, which has weakened him politically to an extent unimaginable before March 9, the day he took on the chief justice.

It would entail dissolving the assemblies by the second week of July, so that elections are held within 90 days of the dissolution as laid down in the Constitution, and also enable a presidential election as required between September 15 and October 15.

According to some reports, President Musharraf is also considering the option of holding only the parliamentary elections ahead of time, and seeking re-election from a combination of a new National Assembly and existing provincial assemblies.

However, there is still a strong lobby in the ruling Pakistan Muslim League which insists that there is no question of an early dissolution of the National Assembly alone or together with the provincial assemblies. According to this lobby, elections will be held as scheduled, after the assemblies complete their terms in November.

An Opposition “all parties’s conference” which is meeting in London on July 7 and 8 on a call by Pakistan Muslim league (N) leader Nawaz Sharif to work on building a united anti-Musharraf front, is likely to discuss its own options in each of the scenarios.

President Musharraf’s promised announcements may throw some light on which scenario is most likely.

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