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Pakistan parliament to reelect Musharraf: PM

By admin | April 24, 2007

Islamabad - Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf will be elected for a second term by the sitting parliament in September or October before it is dissolved ahead of general elections, Premier Shaukat Aziz said.

Aziz’s comments are the first confirmation of a move that has been floated in political circles for months and that opposition groups say is unconstitutional.

They say military ruler Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, should be elected by the legislature after the parliamentary polls, which are due late this year or early next.

“The election of president is due in September-October this year and… President Musharraf will be re-elected by the present assemblies with comfortable majority,” Aziz was quoted as saying late on Sunday by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan.
He added that Musharraf himself would decide when to shed his role as army chief and that the current assemblies “through two third-majority passed a bill to allow President Musharraf to keep the uniform till December this year.”

General Musharraf was elected to a five-year term in 2002 by an electoral college of the national parliament and senate and the country’s four provincial assemblies.

He promised to shed his uniform at the end of 2004 but reneged on the pledge, saying he needed to keep his military role to tackle extremism and other threats to the country.

The move detailed by Aziz comes at a time of political turmoil in Pakistan following Musharraf’s dismissal of the country’s chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, on March 9.

Opposition groups have said that Musharraf did so to to weaken the judiciary ahead of any potential legal challenges against his plans to stay on as army chief and to get reelected by the current parliament.

But recent talk of of a possible deal to allow former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to return from exile and become prime minister shows that Musharraf is trying to strengthen his grip on power in other ways, analysts say.

Topics: Pakistan News |