Musharraf files to run for president

PAKISTAN: Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf Thursday formally applied to run in October 6 presidential polls, despite a looming Supreme Court ruling that could yet ruin his bid for five more years in power.

President Musharraf faced more trouble from the court when its chief justice ordered the immediate release of dozens of opposition activists who were seized at the weekend after vowing to rally against his re-election.

Musharraf, a key US ally fighting for his political survival, has been locked in conflict with the Islamic republic’s highest judicial body since his botched bid to sack chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry in March.

In a show of defiance, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and several cabinet ministers swept up to the election commission in Islamabad on Thursday in a convoy of black limousines to file Musharraf’s nomination papers. “Today is a historic day for Pakistan,” Aziz told state television.

Hundreds of riot police and commandos were deployed around the building and at the Supreme Court across the road to guard against protests by the opposition. All key roads into the city were sealed off. Later two opposition candidates also filed nomination papers.

Hundreds of lawyers chanted “Go Musharraf, go!” and “Death to the chief election commissioner!” as former Supreme Court judge Wajihuddin Ahmad registered as a candidate.

Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party also filed the nomination papers of its vice president, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, a party spokesman said. Musharraf’s allies have enough seats to win the vote, to be carried out by the national and provincial parliaments.

But the opposition wants him to be elected from new assemblies after a general election due by early 2008.

Lawmakers from the opposition All Parties Democratic Movement late Thursday decided to resign from parliament, a move that would deprive the poll of credibility.

Party leaders would submit the resignations to the speaker of the national and provincial parliaments on Tuesday, senior opposition leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman told a news conference in the northwest city of Peshawar.

The same day, the chief minister of the Islamist-ruled North West Frontier Province would ask the governor to dissolve the provincial assembly, the only opposition-controlled one, he said.

The United States, Musharraf’s main backer, issued an unusually harsh condemnation this week of the “extremely disturbing” arrests, while the European Union and Canada also expressed concern.

Islamabad, Friday, AFP