By Muhammad Najeeb, IANS
Islamabad : Incumbent Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf won Saturday’s controversial presidential election by a huge margin, according to unofficial results. Formal notification of the military ruler as the winner has been barred by the Supreme Court, which is hearing petitions challenging his candidacy when he is the army chief.
The poll was held while lawyers — in the forefront of the agitation against the military ruler — held demonstrations against the process here and in provincial capitals. The protest led to violence in Peshawar, and there were some serious injuries.
As per the results announced following the polls, Musharraf — who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999 — got 671 votes from an electoral college that would have had a strength of 1,072 if all members of national and provincial legislatures had been voting.
The win makes Musharraf Pakistan’s first military ruler to be elected by parliament, though almost all opposition legislators have resigned from national and provincial assemblies against his contesting for the post while in uniform.
Musharraf’s closest rival, former Supreme Court judge Wajihuddin Ahmed, had eight votes cast in his favour.
The third candidate, Makhdoom Amin Fahim of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), had already announced boycott of the proceedings amid the resignation of 199 members of the All Parties Democratic Alliance (APDM) from the national and provincial assemblies, reducing the total strength of the electoral college from the original 1,072.
Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) also abstained from the widely condemned electoral exercise, making the announcement just before the voting started.
“We cannot vote for a president in uniform, we will abstain,” Fahim told reporters at the national assembly, the lower house of parliament.
“This is a great day…and voting went in a peaceful and decent manner,” Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said after the polling. “I congratulate the nation,” he said, adding people should know that the politics of self-interest by the opposition had been defeated and it was the “victory of truth”.
However the election commission cannot declare Musharraf the winner as the Supreme Court Friday barred the poll body from announcing the official results.
Musharraf got 252 votes from the federal parliament. The total strength of both chambers of parliament is 442 — with 342 members in the national assembly and 100 in the senate.
Ahmed got two votes from the federal parliament while three were declared invalid. Eighty-six members of the All Parties Democratic Alliance had already resigned from the federal parliament. In National Assembly, 199 members voted in the election while in Senate 58 members cast their votes.
Musharraf got 253 votes in the Punjab assembly, where the total strength is 372. Ahmed got three votes while and one vote was declared void.
In the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) with a total strength of 124, Musharraf received 31 votes, Ahmed got one and two votes were declared void.
The Balochistan assembly has a strength of 65. Thirty-three votes were cast, all in favour of Musharraf.
In Sindh, Musharraf got 102 votes and Ahmed two in a house of 165.
In its order Friday, Pakistan’s Supreme Court had said that the election process should proceed as per schedule but the “final notification (of the winner) will not be issued until the decision of the petition challenging Musharraf’s re-election in uniform, for which the process is to begin from Oct 17.”
Musharraf’s two rivals — Fahim and Ahmed, a former judge supported by the lawyers’ community — and some opposition politicians have challenged his candidature in the court.
Amid an opposition boycott and protests on the streets, members of the federal parliament and provincial assemblies supporting the government voted from 10 a.m. in the parliament house here and in the provincial assemblies in Karachi, Lahore, Quetta and Peshawar.
The election commission for the first time used translucent or see-through ballot boxes.
The APDM had given a countrywide strike call while lawyers, in the forefront of a campaign against Musharraf, observed a “black day” Saturday, taking out protest marches in Peshawar, Islamabad and other cities.
The protests turned violent in Peshawar, leading to clashes with the police in which at least 20 people were injured. A police jeep was set on fire. The lawyers burnt an effigy of Musharraf, shouting slogans like “Go Musharraf Go!” Leading lawyer Latif Afridi was seriously injured. Both his legs were broken during the clashes.
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.
The PPP is opposed to Musharraf’s presidential ambitions while he is the army chief, but its leader Benazir Bhutto is locked in a power sharing deal with the president to help her to return to Pakistan and fight general elections.
In a desperate bid to have former prime minister Bhutto on his side, Musharraf, whose popularity is rapidly on the wane, Friday night issued an ordinance giving immunity to politicians and bureaucrats facing corruption and criminal charges in courts.
Bhutto, who faces several corruption charges, is the main beneficiary of the ordinance.
But both PPP and the government insist that the ordinance is not individual specific, rather a step towards national reconciliation. They are comparing it with the post-apartheid era in South Africa.