LAHORE, Dec 1: Grand Democratic Alliance president Hamid Nasir Chattha says the powers of the president should be enhanced considerably to enable him to avert military interventions in the future.

Talking to reporters here on Saturday, he said powers available to the president under the Eighth Amendment should be restored.

He argued that the military did not intervene during the period the amendment was a part of the constitution. But, he said, the situation changed when the ‘safety valve’ was taken away.

About the elections, he said, he believed that President Gen Pervez Musharraf would honour his commitment to the Supreme Court and give the electorate the opportunity to choose their representatives by October.

For elections to be free and fair, he said, the electoral rolls should be prepared afresh. The existing rolls did contain new entries but names of some voters who had died during the past several years had not been deleted. Such votes, Mr Chattha said, provided the contestants the opportunity to manipulate results.

He said the Election Commission should be made autonomous and powerful so that it could discharge its obligations without being influenced by any individual or institution.

Answering a question, he claimed that unification of various factions of the PML would take place ahead of the elections. He said he was in contact with important leaders of other factions and that there had been progress in the direction. Mr Chattha said that he was keeping Pir Pagara informed about the developments in this regard.

Meanwhile, the PML (Quaid-i-Azam) president, Mian Muhammad Azhar, has proposed that the military rulers should start taking steps for the establishment of a representative government in the country.

In a press statement here on Saturday, he said only an elected government could steer the country out of the problems.

He defended his party’s support to the Afghan policy of the government, saying any other policy would have been a recipe for disaster. He said the government should now try to have a friendly government in Afghanistan.