ISLAMABAD, Oct 5: Amid opposition protests, a depleted and dying parliamentary electoral college will vote on Saturday in a disputed presidential election Gen Pervez Musharraf is sure to win after the Supreme Court gave a go-ahead but forbade notification of the result until it rules on challenges to his candidacy, which may take weeks.

Members of the 342-seat National Assembly and the 100-seat Senate will vote from 10am to 3pm at a joint sitting at the parliament house in Islamabad while those of the four provincial assemblies will do it at the same time at the seats of their respective legislatures in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta.

Most opposition parties have walked out of the process by resigning from the National Assembly and the provincial assemblies to truncate the 1,170-member, but 702-vote, college (because of a proportional representation formula for the provinces) with the aim to rob the election of political legitimacy and have called for a nationwide general strike on Saturday.

Lawyers’ organisations have also announced plans to boycott courts and hold protest meetings and marches on what they have designated as a “black day”.

But the process was spared a further erosion of credibility by a last-minute government agreement on a political package with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to avoid resignations or boycott by the country’s largest opposition party and the failure of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) alliance ruling the North West Frontier Province to dissolve the provincial assembly there before the presidential vote.

MMA is the biggest component of the newly-formed All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM), around 200 of whose lawmakers have resigned their seats — 87 from the National Assembly and 113 from the provincial assemblies. All these assemblies are due to complete their five-year terms on Nov 15, which is also the last day of President Musharraf’s present five-year term based on a controversial referendum in 2002 rather than an election.

The opposition move was designed to block President Musharraf from contesting for what he calls a second and his critics see as a constitutionally prohibited third five-year term besides legal battles in courts by three basically symbolic rival candidates — Makhdoom Amin Fahim and Mrs Faryal Talpur of the PPP and former Supreme Court judge Wajihuddin Ahmed, who has been put up by pro-democracy lawyers’ groups.

All three challengers, who continue to remain in the field, had put up their candidatures to be able to pose legal challenges as they had no hope of winning the vote against Gen Musharraf, whose loyalists have a comfortable majority in the electoral college. The resignations will have no legal effect on the vote in which the winner must get only the majority of the polled votes.

Saturday’s vote comes after some days of suspense, which ended after a 10-judge Supreme Court bench refused requests from Mr Fahim and Mr Ahmed to stay the election process but ordered the Election Commission not to notify the winner until a final ruling on their petitions, for which hearings will resume on Oct 17.But lawyers from the two sides, who initially seemed to be satisfied with the ruling, had different views about whether the Election Commission can disclose the count of Saturday’s vote without formally notifying the winner.

Mr Hamid Ali Khan, the counsel for Mr Wajihuddin Ahmed, told the media that he thought the commission must withhold even a count of votes until the petitions were finally decided.

But Attorney-General Malik Mohammad Qayyum said the unofficial result of the count would be available to the media because the court had only prohibited the formal notification of the winner.

In a related development, the National Assembly, whose session was not called on the previously decided date of Oct 4, will now meet on Saturday at 8.30am mainly to allow the use of its chamber for voting in the presidential election.