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85 Pakistan parliamentarians quit in protest

ISLAMABAD: Opposition members of Parliament and three Provincial Assemblies affiliated to the All-Parties Democracy Movement resigned en masse on Tuesday in protest against the October 6 Presidential election, in which President Pervez Musharraf will seek another term, while two rival candidates mounted a fresh legal challenge against his candidature.

The parliamentarians marched in procession to the National Assembly alongside hundreds of activists from their parties, and handed in their resignations to Speaker Chaudhary Amir Hussain.

In all, 85 parliamentarians resigned — 62 from the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, 20 from the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), and three others, including cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan.

The resignations are not expected to disrupt the indirect election of the President, in which members of the National Assembly, the Senate and the Provincial Assemblies, vote. The ruling PML (Q), which has a simple majority in the 342-seat Parliament, will be able to provide President Musharraf a victory. MMA leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman said after the resignations, the Presidential election would hold “neither constitutional nor moral legitimacy.”

PML(N) leader Javed Hashmi said, “We think this is an illegal and unconstitutional [election], and we don’t want to be part of it. It is against the norms of the democratic process that a Parliament that is completing its term in a few days should vote in a new President for the next five years.” He urged the Pakistan People’s Party, the second largest party in the National Assembly, to join in the resignations.

PPP leader Benazir Bhutto has called a meeting of party leaders in London on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss strategy for the election. The PPP has said if President Musharraf did not accept its terms for an agreement, which includes the demand that he should not contest in uniform, it might also consider resigning.

Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid told television channels that the government had decided to withdraw corruption cases against Ms. Bhutto. He said this could happen on Tuesday itself.

A report in The Daily Times said President Musharraf would bring in a “national reconciliation ordinance” by Wednesday, granting amnesty from corruption cases to all those who held public office from 1985 until 2007.

More than 70 provincial Opposition legislators in the Provincial Assemblies of Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab also handed in their resignations. But in the North-West Frontier Province, a plan by the ruling MMA to dissolve the Assembly, which could have jeopardised the election, was pre-empted by pro-Musharraf legislators, who submitted a no-confidence motion against the Chief Minister on Monday.

While the MMA has the majority to defeat the motion, the Chief Minister cannot call for dissolution unless the no-trust vote is settled. The NWFP Speaker has summoned the Assembly for this purpose on Wednesday. The legal challenge to General Musharraf’s election is also hotting up again. A nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court will begin hearing on Thursday petitions from two other candidates, the PPP’s Makhdoom Amin Fahim and the former Supreme Court judge, Wajihuddin Ahmed.

The petitions challenge General Musharraf’s candidature while remaining Army chief, oppose a Presidential election from an electoral college whose term is about to end, and plead for his disqualification and a stay on the election.

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