ISLAMABAD, Jan 23: In what looked like a bolt from the blue, Chief Election Commissioner Qazi Mohammad Farooq on Wednesday ordered acting president Chaudhry Amir Hussain to suspend his campaign for a National Assembly seat from the Punjab province after a PPP woman candidate accused her rival of misusing his office. But the PPP was not impressed by this rare exercise of authority by the country’s top election official against a person in high authority and said Mr Hussain should have been disqualified for the contest for becoming acting president in his capacity as National Assembly Speaker after President Pervez Musharraf left for a foreign tour last week.

The complaint was made by PPP candidate from NA-111 constituency in Sialkot district, Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan, on Monday, a day after President Musharraf left for an eight-day European tour and Mr Hussain — a candidate of formerly ruling Pakistan Muslim League from the same constituency — stood in for him.

An Election Commission statement, quoting commission secretary Kanwar Mohammad Dilshad, said the chief election commissioner had “ordered” that Mr Hussain “may refrain from visiting the area of his constituency and to suspend his election campaign during the period he is holding the charge of acting president”, which is due to last until President Musharraf returns home on Jan 28.

A top PPP watchdog for the Feb 18 elections, Senator Sardar Latif Khan Khosa, said Mr Hussain’s name should have been erased from the list of candidates, arguing that an article of the Constitution that debarred a president from standing for a parliamentary seat applied also to an acting president.

Clause (2) of the Constitution’s article 43 says the “president shall not be candidate for election as a member of Majlis-i-Shura (parliament) or a provincial assembly” while article 260, relating to definitions of expressions used in the Constitution, says: “ ‘President’ means the president of Pakistan and includes a person for the time acting as, or performing the functions of, the president of Pakistan’....”

Normally, Senate chairman Mohammedmian Soomro should have been the acting president in the absence of President Musharraf. But the responsibility fell on Mr Hussain as Speaker because Mr Soomro was named interim prime minister after then prime minister Shaukat Aziz's cabinet quit on the expiration of its tenure on Nov 15.