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Pakistan’s Court Dismisses Election Cases |
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Written by News Editor
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Monday, 19 November 2007 |
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 19 — Pakistan’s Supreme Court, filled with supporters of the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, after he imposed emergency rule on Nov. 3, dismissed on Monday the main challenges to his re-election, all but ensuring his confirmation to another term by the court this week.
The ruling is the first step in a plan laid out by General Musharraf ahead of parliamentary elections he wants to hold in January. In an interview last week, he said that he would resign as chief of the country’s military after the court cleared all the challenges to his re-election. He has repeatedly said that he will take the oath of president as a civilian.
The general swept to victory on Oct. 6 in an election boycotted by most of the opposition parties, but the Supreme Court’s original judges ordered that the results not be officially confirmed until they had heard all challenges by other candidates.
Also on Monday, General Musharraf’s office announced that he would make a two-day state visit to Saudi Arabia beginning Tuesday. He has made few excursions outside the country in recent months. The destination of Saudi Arabia raised speculation here in the capital because Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister and popular opposition leader, is in exile there, after being deported from Pakistan for a second time in September.
It was Mr. Sharif whom General Musharraf overthrew in 1999 when he seized power in a coup, and he has since been the general’s most uncompromising critic. Diplomats suggested that General Musharraf was making the trip to ensure that the Saudi government would keep his chief rival there and not allow him to leave for Pakistan before the elections. Should he return, Mr. Sharif would represent a serious political threat to both the party of the opposition figure Benazir Bhutto and the party that backs General Musharraf.
In Karachi, the American ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, visited Ms. Bhutto, saying she was following up on a conversation that Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte had had with Ms. Bhutto by telephone on Friday. Mr. Negroponte met with General Musharraf over the weekend.
Talks between Ms. Bhutto, also a former prime minister, and General Musharraf on a possible sharing of power have ended, Ms. Bhutto said last week. Ms. Patterson called for a reconciliation of the moderate forces in Pakistan, an indication that the United States was seeking to smooth over relations between Ms. Bhutto and the general and put their power-sharing plan back on track.
Mr. Negroponte said Sunday that General Musharraf had promised to take some steps to move toward elections, but had not committed on further steps that are necessary. General Musharraf has refused to say when he will lift the emergency and return to a constitutional government; he forced the closing of two independent television news channels on Friday.
Opposition parties and the country’s lawyers’ movement had asserted that General Musharraf was ineligible to seek re-election while holding the post of army chief. They also argued that he could not be elected by the departing Parliament, which has since been dissolved.
On Nov. 3, days before the Supreme Court was to rule on the challenges, General Musharraf suspended the Constitution and fired several justices. He then appointed a new court of 11 judges. Ten of them struck down five of six challenges to his re-election on Monday. The sixth, considered minor, is to be heard on Thursday. That is expected to be dismissed, too.
The opposition presidential candidate, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, who is the deputy leader of Ms. Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party, the country’s main opposition party, requested through his advocate, Shafqat Abassi, that the hearing be postponed until the country was returned to constitutional rule. That request was not accepted, his main advocate, Latif Khosa, said. |
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