World

Pakistan Elections Set For October

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 24, 2002 / 12:40 PM EST / CBS

Signaling the end of three years of military rule in Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf announced Thursday that legislative elections would be held in October.

Elections for national and provincial legislatures means that laws will be enacted in Pakistan by elected representatives rather than by military decree. Musharraf said the vote would be free, fair and impartial.

But the former army commando, who appointed himself president last year after seizing power in a bloodless October 1999 coup, said "checks and balances" would be implemented to prevent abuse of power by civilian governments.

"Elections will be held in October," Musharraf told a conference on human development in Islamabad that was also attended by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The announcement, complies with a Supreme Court ruling. The court had ordered Musharraf to bring back civilian rule by three years from the date of the coup.

Musharraf will remain president and also commander of the Pakistani military, the dominant institution in the country. That does not violate the court order since in Pakistan the president is the head of state while the prime minister runs the government.

Musharraf has said he plans to remain in office for five years after the new Parliament takes office.

The balloting will be held under a new electoral code announced last week under which all of Pakistan's 145 million people, including non-Muslims, will be allowed to vote for the same candidates.

Musharraf has also announced plans to increase the number of seats in the national and provincial Parliaments to stimulate democracy in a country with a long history of authoritarian rule.

The new election code also requires members of the National Assembly to hold university degrees. That would eliminate a significant percentage of the members from the Parliament that was abolished in the military coup that ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

No civilian government has managed to complete a full term in Pakistan, which has struggled since independence from Britain in 1947 with long years of harsh military rule and failed elected administrations.

Between 1988 and 1999, arch rivals Benazir Bhutto of the Pakistan People's Party and Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League, alternated in power.

Bhutto was dismissed in both her terms over allegations of corruption, while Sharif was sacked during his first term and in his second he was ousted by Musharraf.

Sharif was exiled to Saudi Arabia for 10 years in December 2000, while Bhutto, who says she intends to contest the upcoming election, has lived abroad in self-exile since early 1999 fearing arrest if she returned home.

Musharraf said that under his government Pakistan had enjoyed its first taste of real democracy.

"We are functioning in the most democratic manner that this nation has ever seen. The negative is that I'm not elected, I recognize that," he said.

"We will have democracy, I'm a great believe in democracy, but we will adjust it and fine tune it to our own requirements."

The announcement of new elections was part of a series of dramatic moves undertaken by Musharraf since he abandoned his Taliban allies in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and supported the U.S.-led coalition in its war against terrorism.

That decision brought sharp criticism from the country's vocal Islamic religious parties, which failed to muster enough public support to force a change in policy.

This month, Musharraf banned five Islamic extremist groups, including two that were accused by India of carrying out the Dec. 13 attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi.

More than 2,000 people were arrested in a nationwide crackdown, according to the Interior Ministry.