By Muhammad Najeeb, IANS
Islamabad : Wajihuddin Ahmed may be no competition for Pervez Musharraf, but the Pakistan president may have met his match in the Delhi-born former judge who is contesting the presidential election and says candidly that he is not in the race to win.
“I am not in the race to win the presidency but to raise objections against Musharraf’s candidature,” said the 69-year-old Ahmed, who is contesting to make a point and perhaps dent Musharraf’s winning margin as the military dictator runs for a second term.
“If the presidential elections are held under adult franchise system, I am sure (President Pervez) Musharraf would be the loser,” Ahmed, former chief justice of the Sindh High Court, told IANS.
Lawyers in the country, who led a people’s movement against Musharraf that spilled over to the streets of Pakistan and resulted in the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, have put up Ahmed to stand for the country’s top post. This is despite the fact that they have no support in parliament, with 84 opposition members of the National Assembly and two of the ruling PML-Q submitting their resignations Tuesday.
Ahmed’s name was proposed and seconded by senators (members of the upper house) from the Jamaat-e-Islami.
Known for his integrity, Ahmed was amongst the six Supreme Court judges who declined to take a new oath under the military order a couple of months after Musharraf took over, preferring to forgo his pension and other retirement benefits.
Ahmed and Musharraf have several things in common. Like the president, Ahmed was born in Delhi – but five years after Musharraf. Both their families migrated to Karachi after partition and both are Urdu speaking.
But they are poles apart in their views.
“In a democracy there is no place for dictatorship… Musharraf is a dictator and has no legal, constitutional or moral authority to rule the country,” Ahmed said firmly.
“I think politicians who provide their shoulders to dictators are also not doing any good service to the nation and country,” added Ahmed, whose father, Wahiduddin Ahmed, a lawyer by profession, was president of the Muslim League’s Delhi chapter when the subcontinent was waging its freedom struggle against British rule.
A graduate of Karachi’s prestigious S.M. Law College, he said his first law teacher was his father, who was also a member of the five-judge bench in united India, president of Sindh High Court Bar Association and chief justice of the West Pakistan High Court.
Ahmed, who now finds himself at the centre of a frenzied political storm, spends most of his time in his Karachi home – where he moved after resigning from the Supreme Court – with his friends and family.