LAHORE, Sept 24: Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal president Qazi Husain Ahmad has welcomed the nomination of Wajihuddin Ahmad as a presidential candidate by the legal fraternity and said the former Supreme Court judge is the best choice in exposing the ineligibility of Gen Pervez Musharraf to be a candidate.

In a statement issued here on Monday, he said the MMA senators, who were not going to resign, would propose and second the candidature of Justice Wajih, who had demonstrated impeccable integrity as a jurist by refusing to take oath as a judge of the apex court under the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) issued by the Musharraf regime to suppress the judiciary.

He said that if the Election Commission accepted the nomination of Gen Musharraf, the MMA would challenge the decision in the Supreme Court and request Justice Wajih to fight the legal battle.

Simultaneously, the All Parties’ Democratic Movement (APDM) would take to the streets to oust Gen Musharraf from the run for the presidency in uniform in violation of the Constitution, he said.

He condemned the arrests of APDM leaders across the country and said the regime had gone to the limit of disobeying the Constitution and negating political norms to perpetuate its power. He said Raja Zafrul Haq, Javed Hashmi, Hafiz Husain Ahmad, Prof Sajid Mir, Liaquat Baloch, Sirajul Haq, Mian Mohammad Aslam, Hanif Abbasi, Dr Mohammad Kamal, Gul Andaz Abbasi and other leaders had been detained.

The MMA president said the arrests and detentions were designed to prevent the APDM legislators from resigning and performing other lawful political activities. He said the legislators who formed the electoral college for the presidential polls were being arrested while the election process was in progress. He criticised the blockade of different roads in the federal capital, especially the Constitutional Avenue, saying that it had created difficulties for the litigant public in reaching the Supreme Court.