ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will elect a president on Sept. 6, the Election Commission announced yesterday. Lawmakers will vote in national and provincial assemblies from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. that day, Election Commission Secretary Kunwar Dilshad said.
The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) earlier proposed the widower of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto for the post. The move makes Asif Ali Zardari the clear front-runner to fill the leadership vacuum created by the resignation of Pervez Musharraf on Monday. “Now it depends on him whether he himself becomes (president) or nominates someone else,” Nabeel Gabol, a party leader, said.
Should he contest the election, Zardari is assured of victory without help from coalition partner Pakistan Muslim League (N). The point is whether he would like to be the head of state with truncated powers. The coalition promised the nation during February elections that it would scrap Article 58-2 (B) of the constitution that empowers the president to dissolve national and provincial assemblies and dismiss the prime minister and provincial chief ministers.
The PPP announcement is likely to strain the coalition further as Nawaz Sharif, head of the PML (N), has suggested that the next president should be from either Balochistan or North West Frontier Province, thereby ruling Zardari or himself out of the contest. Zardari comes from Sindh and Sharif from Punjab.
The coalition is already mired in wrangling over how to restore judges purged from the Supreme Court when Musharraf imposed emergency rule last year. Sharif has repeatedly threatened to go into opposition if the judges are not restored quickly.
Yesterday, he set next Wednesday as a deadline for the judges to return to the bench — the third such ultimatum since Musharraf stepped down.
A leader of a powerful lawyers’ movement that has mounted street protests in favor of the judges issued a veiled warning against any further backsliding.
