ISLAMABAD, Oct 7: President Gen Pervez Musharraf said on Monday the future parliament will have all powers to legislate, including the power to amend the Constitution as per the existing constitutional provisions.

The president said this while talking to members of different observers’ missions, now in Pakistan to survey the Oct 10 elections.

He assured that the elected government will be free to govern as it deemed appropriate “but there will be a check on loot and plunder as well as misrule.”

About Article 58 (2-B) and the National Security Council, the president said: “Both are aimed at injecting sustainability into the democratic system so that it does not get derailed.”

He assured the observers that they were at liberty to go anywhere in Pakistan to observe the polling process. He said he had instructed the army to provide full security and logistics support to the observers, so that they could feel free to move anywhere they liked.

The president emphasized that the government had provided a level playing field to all contestants in the elections.

He said he had issued instructions to all the four governors to assist the EC in its task of achieving fairness and transparency of the voting process.

The administration, he said, must make all its resources available to the EC in the discharge of its duties.

The president said the government had on purpose decided not to deploy army on polling duty as he would not like anyone to have an excuse to allege that the army in any way had been used to influence the voting process.

He urged the observers to keep in view Pakistan’s political history and its existing political culture which demands a democratic dispensation that is workable and sustainable in Pakistan’s peculiar environment. The powers to bring about necessary changes in the Constitution were granted to his government by the Supreme Court, he said.

The coming five years will be a period of consolidation of the democratic process. “It will, in fact, be the crowning of all the political reforms programmes.”

In his remarks, the chief of European Union observers group, John Cushnahan said the team was here to observe the holding of Oct 10 elections. “Our role is not to interfere or monitor the elections but to observe these,” he said.

“We will be giving our report only after we have observed the Oct 10 polls,” he added. —APP