ISLAMABAD, 6 September 2007 — Pakistan’s Supreme Court yesterday asked the attorney general and prime minister’s adviser Sharifuddin Pirzada, to name the date when President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s tenure as head of state and chief of army staff ends.
The court was hearing identical petitions filed by All Pakistan Lawyers’ Forum and head of Jamaat-e-Islami, Qazi Hussain Ahmed.
The petitions challenge Musharraf’s holding of the posts of president and army chief at the same time and his seeking another term as president, which opponents say is unconstitutional.
“Our battle, our struggle, is against the system,” A.K. Dogar, a lawyer for the Pakistan Lawyers’ Forum which filed one of the petitions, told the court in a reference to military rule.
The details of Musharraf’s status are controversial. The government says his term as president and army chief expires on Dec. 31 but that he must seek re-election at least 90 days before that, by Oct. 15. But opponents say Musharraf took over as president in June 2000 and later got himself elected in a rigged referendum, meaning that he has already completed his five-year term and should be stripped of the post.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry said the government must name the date. The judge is a growing thorn in Musharraf’s side since the president’s botched bid to sack him earlier this year.
Chaudhry told the court that the case would be adjourned for the day while Musharraf’s main legal adviser goes to “seek instructions from the president on expiry of the term.” The seven-member bench of the Supreme Court, headed by the chief justice, directed Pirzada to submit a report to court today after consulting Musharraf.
His order came after the Supreme Court took up the petition, filed by the Jamaat-i-Islami party, which challenges a 2004 parliamentary act allowing Musharraf to be president-in-uniform.
“The court’s ruling will make sure that the government announces the exact date of the expiry of Musharraf’s term,” the hard-line party’s lawyer, Akram Sheikh, told reporters outside the court.
Gen. Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, toppling Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and was chief executive for a year before becoming president.
Meanwhile, the court indefinitely adjourned a hearing into another challenge against Musharraf’s position as army chief. The court had last week agreed to hear the appeal by Qazi Hussain Ahmed. The application will now be bundled up with a similar appeal filed by cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan.
Musharraf has suffered a series of legal setbacks since the Supreme Court reinstated Chaudhry in July, four months after the president suspended him on charges of misconduct, sparking mass protests. Musharraf has seen his popularity slide since he tried to dismiss the chief justice in March.
At the same time, the government is under attack by militants who are believed to have engineered Tuesday’s suicide bombings near the army headquarters in Rawalpindi that killed 25 people, including staff of the main intelligence agency.
In a key ruling in August the court said Sharif could return from exile.
In another development, the Election Commission rejected a reference of disqualification against cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan saying, “the speaker of the National Assembly had sent the reference with a mala fide intention.”
