By NNN-PTI
Islamabad : Pakistan’s Election Commission will decide Tuesday whether the general election will be held as scheduled on Jan 8 after assessing the impact of violent protests that rocked the country following the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto on poll preparations.
An emergent meeting of the poll panel chaired Monday by Chief Election Commissioner Qazi Muhammad Farooq sought reports from poll officials in the four provinces about the impact of the protests on election arrangements.
The provincial officials were directed to submit their reports by Monday evening and another meeting of the Election Commission to be held Tuesday will decide whether the parliamentary polls should be held on schedule, officials said.
Political parties are expected to decide their future strategy once the Election Commission announces its decision.
Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party on Sunday said it favoured the holding of polls on Jan 8 while the PML-Q, which backs President Pervez Musharraf, indicated that it wanted a brief postponement.
Reports have suggested that the poll panel might defer the polls till the end of February or the first week of March in view of a 40-day period of mourning announced by the PPP for Bhutto and the Islamic month of Moharram.
In a statement issued on Dec 29, the Election Commission had said that pre-poll arrangements, including the printing of ballot papers and training of poll personnel, had been “adversely affected” by the protests against Bhutto’s assassination.
Meanwhile, Pakistani authorities have dismissed as ridiculous an email that slain former premier Benazir Bhutto had sent to her US-based spokesman which said that President Pervez Musharraf would be responsible if anything happened to her.
“It’s a ridiculous statement which doesn’t deserve a comment,” said the president’s spokesman Maj Gen (retired) Rashid Qureshi.
“I don’t want to dignify it by offering any comment on it,” Qureshi was quoted as saying by the Dawn newspaper.
Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari, who was on Sunday named co-chairman of her Pakistan People’s Party, has said that the email was “self-explanatory” and should be treated as Bhutto’s “dying declaration”.
Media reports have said that Bhutto wrote in the email that if anything happened to her, “I would hold (President Pervez) Musharraf responsible”.
CNN reporter Wolf Blitzer received the email on Oct 26 from Mark Siegel, Bhutto’s Washington-based spokesman, eight days after she narrowly escaped an attempt on her life in Karachi on Oct 19.
In the email, Bhutto wrote: “I have been made to feel insecure by his (Musharraf’s) minions”. It said that specific improvements had not been made to her security arrangements, and that the president was responsible.
Zardari has said the PPP will approach the UN to conduct a probe into Bhutto’s killing on the lines of the world body’s investigation into the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.