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Plea against Musharraf quashed

ISLAMABAD: The Benzir Bhutto-led Pakistan People’s Party was closer to participating in the January 8 elections on Thursday while a purged Supreme Court dismissed the last of the petitions challenging President Pervez Musharraf’s candidacy in the October 6 presidential election.

But the notification of Gen. Musharraf’s victory in the election has to wait one more day. Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar said the court would announce its order in the case only on Friday, and the notification can be made only after this.

A verdict by another bench of the court on the petitions challenging the emergency and the promulgation of the provisional constitutional order also did not come on Thursday as expected, and is now likely on Friday.

The court’s order in the candidacy case will pave the way for Gen. Musharraf to be sworn in for his new term, an event awaited at home and abroad for his promise to step down as Army chief before he takes the oath of office.

While his resignation as the Army chief and transition to civilian president will blunt international criticism, in Pakistan, opposition parties — including the Pakistan People’s Party — lawyers and civil society activists are saying Gen. Musharraf is now “unacceptable” even as a civilian president.

But political parties remain divided over whether or not to boycott the January 8 parliamentary and provincial Assembly elections, each waiting for the other to make up its mind.

With Monday being the last date for acceptance of nominations, Benazir Bhutto, leader of the People’s Party of Pakistan, gave a conditional green signal to her party members to start filing their nominations, saying the PPP “does not want to leave the field open” but would withdraw the nominations if other parties decided to boycott the elections.

“We don’t want to give a walkover to our opponents,” she said, adding that the party’s final decision, she told reporters in Karachi, would depend on the decision of the other opposition parties.

Meanwhile, the rest of the opposition, grouped under the All Parties Democratic Movement, is to meet on Saturday to arrive at its joint decision. But individual leaders in the party have been calling for a boycott.

At a crowded press conference in the capital a day after he was released from Dera Ghazi Khan prison, Imran Khan said he would recommend to the APDM for a boycott as “participating in this fraudulent election would mean giving legitimacy to the November 3 plan of Gen. Musharraf to purge the judiciary.”

Unshaved and looking somewhat haggard, Mr. Khan ended the hunger-strike he began in jail during the press conference with a sip of water, after partymen urged him to do so.

The former cricket superhero said fair elections were not possible in the absence of an independent judiciary and a free media. He said the APDM’s decision would depend on the PPP.

The Nawaz Sharif-led PML (N), whose leader says he will return to Pakistan from his second exile in Saudi Arabia before the last day of nominations to finalise his party strategy, has also expressed its readiness to boycott if all other parties do so.

The Jamat-i-Islami, too, said it would boycott if other parties agreed on this. So far, only the Jamat-e-Ulema Islami, has declared that it will contest the election.

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