ISLAMABAD, Oct 2: The presidential electoral college on Tuesday stood hugely impaired, beyond repair, as most opposition parties walked out of it by resigning from the National Assembly and provincial assemblies in a move that could force the government to try to retrieve an almost collapsed political deal with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
The resignations by 85 opposition members from the 342-seat National Assembly, which is the core of the 1,170-member but 702-vote college, and by an unspecified number from three of the four provincial legislatures that form along with the 100-seat Senate the college, came just five days before the Oct 6 presidential election that opposition seeks to block.
The move coincided with challenges filed in the Supreme Court by two rival candidates against President Pervez Musharraf’s bid to be elected for another five-year term despite his alleged disqualifications and the naming of a new army chief to succeed him after the election.
As the resignations came from parties grouped in the newly-formed MMA-led All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM), the fate of the key MMA-controlled legislature of the North West Frontier Province was hanging in the balance because of rival moves for and against its dissolution and the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP), as the largest single opposition party, was yet to choose between resigning and abstaining.
While APDM move seems bound to further unsettle the government after a series of legal, political and administrative setbacks, political sources said a chance to save the presidential election from a further erosion of its legitimacy lay in a compromise with Ms Bhutto’s PPP before the party takes a final decision in an Oct 3-4 meeting of its Central Executive Committee and the Federal Council in London.
But the sources said opponents of such a compromise within the ruling Pakistan Muslim League would go all out to restrain the president from meeting all conditions that Ms Bhutto wants to be met for a smooth transition to full democracy after eight years of military-led rule, though the government was reported to be ready to bring a new law to meet some of them.
In the prevailing political uncertainty, great significance is also attached to the promotion of Lt-Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kiani to full general and his appointment as vice chief of the army staff who would assume charge of chief of army staff when this office is vacated by President Musharraf.
But it is yet to be seen whether mere naming General Kiani, who was chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence when he led government negotiators who met Ms Bhutto in Dubai last month, as the future army chief would meet the PPP demand that General Musharraf give up his uniform before the Oct 6 vote to avoid PPP resignations from the assemblies.
The political sources said the threatened PPP resignations, or even a boycott of the presidential election, could make the Oct 6 vote more questionable as would the dissolution of the NWFP assembly if the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) of six Islamic parties were able to defeat, in time, moves by pro-Musharraf legislators to block its move.Meanwhile, the Supreme Court will also be a focus of public attention about how it rules on objections to President Musharraf’s candidacy that revolve around his present position as army chief and a constitutional bar against contesting an election before completing two years after retirement on the one hand and the government view that General Musharraf was exempted from these disqualifications as a consequence of the 17th Constitution Amendment, which the MMA helped the government to get through parliament in December 2003.
The implications of that controversial amendment, which legitimised sweeping powers assumed by the president, echoed on Tuesday when the opposition members presented their resignations to National Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain.
Pukhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party chief Mahmood Khan Achakzai said in brief speech while presenting his resignation that he considered General Musharraf’s Oct 12, 1999 coup as treason and that after restoration of democracy he would file an FIR against him and those who supported him and give evidence against them.
Mr Hussain kept quiet then but could not when Mr Achakzai repeated his intention while the two were leaving the speaker’s chambers. “Your opposition-walas too were his supporters,” the speaker said in an obvious reference to MMA’s role in the passage of the 17th Amendment.
