Election/selection drama has started. Mushy is sending his ISI chief to convince BB not to go with the opposition. This puts BB in very awkward position, and she will be seen as playing games with a dictator. If she quits and goes with opposition she will not be able to make a deal with Mushrraf and come back, but if she does that is going to further dent her credibility with public.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22515002-2703,00.html
MPs quit to upset Pervez poll run
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Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent | October 02, 2007
ABOUT 250 opposition MPs in Pakistan have quit their seats in a dramatic attempt to undermine the electoral college that is set to re-elect President Pervez Musharraf.
General Musharraf sent two of his top aides - including his newly appointed head of Inter Services Intelligence - to London for talks with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto to convince her to stop MPs from her Pakistan People’s Party joining the walk-out from national and provincial parliaments.
The spymaster, General Nadeem Taj, accompanied by national security adviser General Tariq Aziz, were reportedly preparing to offer Ms Bhutto apower-sharing deal that would ensure her an unfettered return to Pakistan this month and immediate access to bank accounts frozen over corrup-tion charges.
Ms Bhutto would be asked to “quietly help” ensure General Musharraf’s re-election on Saturday by not joining other opposition parties to cripple the credibility of the presidential ballot due to take place in an electoral college that consists of members of the national and four provincial assemblies.
A complicated constitutional arrangement means the electoral college consists of 1170 electors from the national and provincial assemblies. But a system of weighting means that the number of votes counted in a presidential election is 702.
With his Pakistan Muslim League (Qaid) controlling a majority, estimated at 65, within the electoral college, there is no doubt that General Musharraf would win re-election.
But opposition MPs from the All Parties Democratic Alliance, led by exiled former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), resigned in droves yesterday, saying that “at the very least, we can make this a very, very hollow victory for the military ruler … we will demonstrate that he is a very unpopular leader with a very narrow support base”.
Attempts were made to seek the dissolution of the provincial assembly in the North West Frontier Province, where the opposition is in control, as a further way of embarrassing General Musharraf by excluding one of the four component provinces from the election.
Justice Rana Bhagwandas - the Supreme Court judge who presided over last week’s challenge to the military ruler’s eligibility to run in the election - said yesterday the President’s dual role of head of state and army chief was illegal.
Justice Bhagwandas, the second most senior member of the Supreme Court bench, was one of three judges who dissented in the decision giving General Musharraf the green light to contest the election.
“I think holding of the dual offices by the President is against the law and illegal,” he said in a statement. “I gave the verdict by acting on the voice of my conscience.”
Ms Bhutto was preparing to apply to the Pakistani courts for anticipatory bail, which will ensure she is not arrested on corruption charges when she returns on October 18 after 10 years of self-imposed exile.
- A suicide bomber wearing a woman’s burka struck at a police checkpoint in northwestern Pakistan yesterday, killing at least 13 people and wounding 20, officials said.
The blast happened on the outskirts of Bannu, a key garrison town near Pakistan’s troubled tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
