By Muhammad Najeeb, IANS
Islamabad : Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf won Saturday’s presidential election boycotted by the opposition by a huge margin, setting the stage for him to quit as the army chief, eight years after he seized power in a bloodless coup.
Although the Supreme Court had said while allowing the ballot that the result would be kept in abeyance, Chief Election Commissioner Qazi Mohammed Farooq went ahead and announced the outcome of vote count while maintaining that it was not a formal notification.
For the first time translucent or see-through ballot boxes were used in a Pakistani election to avoid charges of fraud.
With no candidate of any significance pitted against him, it was known that Musharraf would win handsomely. And with only pro-government legislators voting in the federal parliament in Islamabad and in provincial assemblies, the battle for presidency was a listless affair.
According to officials, Musharraf got 671 votes nationwide. His main rival, former Supreme Court judge Wajihuddin Ahmed, received just eight.
In the federal parliament, Musharraf, Washington’s key ally in its war on terror, got 252 of 257 votes. Two went to Wajihuddin, Farooq told reporters at the end of the electoral exercise.
Eighty-six members of the All Parties Democratic Alliance (APDA) had resigned from parliament. In the National Assembly 199 members voted and 58 members cast their ballots in the Senate.
Musharraf got 253 votes in the Punjab assembly. Ahmed got three votes. In the North West Frontier Province, out of a total strength of 124, Musharraf received 31 votes and Ahmed got just one.
In the Balochistan assembly, all 33 of the 65 legislators who voted chose Musharraf. And in Sindh, Musharraf got 102 votes and Ahmed two in a house of 165.
The win makes Musharraf Pakistan’s first military ruler to be elected by parliament, albeit truncated after almost all opposition legislators resigned from national and provincial assemblies against his decision to contest while being the army chief.
The third candidate, Makhdoom Amin Fahim of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), had announced a boycott of the election, just before the balloting began at 10 a.m.
Musharraf’s two rivals and some opposition politicians have challenged his candidature in the Supreme Court.
“We cannot vote for a president in uniform,” Fahim said at the national assembly, the lower house of parliament.
It wasn’t a peaceful day in Pakistan.
On the streets, lawyers — who are in the forefront of a vocal anti-Musharraf campaign — staged noisy demonstrations in all major cities. The protest in Peshawar, where Islamic radicals hold sway, turned violent, leaving 20 people, mostly lawyers, injured.
A police jeep was set on fire. The lawyers burnt an effigy of Musharraf, shouting “Go Musharraf Go!” Leading lawyer Latif Afridi was seriously injured. He suffered fractured in both legs during the clashes.
“This is a great day,” Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said after the polling. “I congratulate the nation.”
Soon after the declaration of results, contrary to expectations, the treasury members simply stood up and started walking out of parliament without any celebrations.
“Musharraf’s deal with Bhutto has dampened the mood,” an MP remarked requesting anonymity. He was referring to the president’s power sharing deal with Bhutto, who is to return to Pakistan this month after the government took measures that would effectively kill graft charges against her in courts.
One pro-government MP said that members of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam (PML-Q) feared a “dark future”.
“I think now the parliament will be dominated by PPP and the prime minister will be Benazir,” he said.
Although Musharraf is Pakistan’s fourth military ruler after Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan and Zia ul Haq, he is the first to get elected by parliament. All the others preferred to give legitimacy to their rule through referendums.
Musharraf had declared himself president for five years after a referendum in 2001 and then got a vote of confidence from the present parliament in November 2002.
Musharraf has announced a return to civilian rule after his election for the second term. His first tenure ends Nov 15 after which he is expected to doff his military uniform.