ISLAMABAD, Pakistan Sept 5: An assorted majority of a parliamentary electoral college will on Saturday deliver a divisive presidency to Asif Ali Zardari, whose double march to succeed former president Pervez Musharraf in what is now Pakistan's most powerful office is marked by political skill and broken promises.
The vote by the two houses of parliament and four provincial assemblies ‚ forming the 1,170-member, but 702-vote, electoral college ‚ only 19 days after former army chief Pervez Musharraf opted to resign rather than face impeachment will mark full transition to elected civilian democracy after about nine years of a military-led regime.
Members of the 342-seat National Assembly and the 100-seat Senate will cast their votes in Islamabad from 10am to 3pm in a joint sitting at the Parliament House while those of the four provincial assemblies will vote at the same time at the seats of their respective legislatures in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta.
Pakistan People's Party co-chairman Zardari appears to have gained a big lead over his two rivals ‚ Pakistan Muslim League-N candidate former Supreme Court chief justice Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui and Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed of the formerly ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q ‚ and, according to most estimates, is likely to win by more than 400 votes.
This will be Pakistan's second presidential election in 11 months, following a controversial Oct 6 election of then General Musharraf for a so-called second term that became the cause of a still-continuing judicial crisis after he sacked many superior court judges under his extra-constitutional Nov 3 emergency mainly aimed to avoid a legal challenge to his candidacy in uniform.
Mr Zardari's unexpected candidature became one of the two reasons for the break-up of a fledgling PPP-led ruling coalition with the withdrawal of PML-N after the PPP leader failed to keep a third deadline for restoration of the deposed judges and also went back on a signed agreement with PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif to elect a non-partisan pro-democracy figure as president if the office still had its present powers but let the PPP put up its own candidate in case it was reduced to original powers envisaged by the 1973 Constitution.
Mr Zardari demonstrated some extraordinary political skills in managing enough support — even if it meant embracing some of staunch Musharraf loyalists like the MQM and some from the PML-Q that he once called "Qatil League" — to keep his party's government intact and to get elected even after losing the PML-N, which had emerged as the second largest party in the Feb 18 election with 92 members in the National Assembly, compared to PPP's 124, but the largest in the Punjab Assembly.
But political sources said his presidency would remain a divisive factor in Pakistani politics until its controversial powers such as to dissolve the National Assembly, sack a prime minister and appoint armed forces' chief, provincial governors and the chief election commissioner, are clipped and he is able to restore his shattered credibility, which is hardly helped by a piecemeal reinstatement of judges generally seen as insulting and aimed to undermine the lawyers' movement.
Both the PPP and PML-N are committed in a joint Charter of Democracy signed in 2006 to restore the constitution to its pre-Oct 12, 1999 position — before it was suspended by General Musharraf on seizing power in a coup that toppled then prime minister Nawaz Sharif, by repealing a controversial Seventeenth Amendment that legitimised his decrees.None of the two military presidents who assumed these powers or the two civilian presidents who only used them had an honourable exit from office.
General Mohammad Ziaul Haq, who first assumed these powers after toppling then prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977, used them to remove his own hand-picked prime minister Mohammad Khan Junejo and dissolve the National Assembly a few months before being killed in a mysterious plane crash, to be remembered as the country's most cruel dictator.
His civilian successor Ghulam Ishaq Khan sacked then prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 1990 and then Nawaz Sharif in 1993, though his second action caused his humiliation when it was overturned by the Supreme Court before both of them resigned in an army-mediated deal to pave the way for fresh election that was won by the PPP.
But Ms Bhutto's second government was removed by her own hand-picked president Farooq Leghari in 1996 when Mr Zardari was straightaway arrested to remain in jail for nine years to face, along with his wife, corruption charges that remained unproven until they were quashed by a controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance decreed by president Musharraf last year.
President Musharraf, who revived the Zia-invented powers years after they were scrapped through a PPP-assisted constitutional amendment during the second Sharif government, did not dissolve the National Assembly by using the constitution's article 58(2)b but picked up three prime ministers in one five-year term before the Feb 18 election that led to a humiliating defeat of his loyalists and his own disgraceful exit.
On the eve of Saturday's vote, Mr Zardari said in a press statement that if elected his priority would be to support the prime minister, the National Assembly and the Senate "to amend the Constitution to bring back into balance the powers of the presidency" and that he "strongly stands for a system where all decisions for the country are taken by the elected representatives". But he did not elaborate on the issue.
Mr Sharif also was quoted by a party press release as telling a meeting of PML-N parliamentary group that his party stood committed to the Charter of Democracy and expected the PPP leadership to honour the signatures their assassinated leader Benazir Bhutto had put with him on the document in London while both were in exile.
All the three parties which have put up their candidates held last-minute campaign meetings in Islamabad with their supporters, including a dinner at the Prime Minister's House which Information Minister Sherry Rehman said was also attended by 22 MNAs and eight senators of the PML-Q. Another PPP source said the party's target was 450 votes.
Sources in the PML-N also said several PML-Q members would vote for their candidate.
All the 340 present members of the National Assembly, whose two seats are still vacant, 100 senators and 65 members of the Balochistan provincial assembly will have one vote each while the votes of the each of the remaining three provincial assemblies, despite their varying strengths — 371 of the Punjab, 168 of Sindh and 124 of the NWFP — will be calculated as equivalent to that of the Balochistan assembly, being the smallest of the four.
Dawn
