Musharraf, rivals toughen their stances on election
KARACHI, Pakistan – The confrontation between U.S.-backed President Pervez Musharraf and opposition groups deepened Tuesday after authorities said that holding parliamentary elections Jan. 8 appeared “impossible” following the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Opposition leaders repeated demands that the voting proceed as scheduled.
The hard lines taken by both sides heightened the possibility that opposition parties could call their supporters into the streets if the vote is postponed. An announcement on the election date had been expected Tuesday, but the Election Commission said it would come today.
“Our position is very clear. We believe there is absolutely no justification or grounds for a postponement of the elections,” said Mian Raza Rabbani, a senior official of Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party who leads the opposition in parliament’s upper house.
He said the PPP would decide how to respond to a postponement after consultation with other opposition parties.
The country of 165 million has been reeling from violence that claimed more than 50 lives and destroyed millions of dollars of property following Bhutto’s Dec. 27 assassination in a gun-and-suicide bombing attack in the city of Rawalpindi.
Pakistan is also struggling to contain a bloody insurgency by Islamic extremists allied with al-Qaida and the Taliban that has grown in response to Musharraf’s heavy-handed use of force.
More political unrest could further destabilize the impoverished nuclear-armed nation by emboldening the insurgents and undermining an economy battered by two successive days of huge stock market losses and a plunging currency.
Election Commission Secretary Kanwar Dilashad, said, however, that “it looks impossible” to hold the vote next week because 13 district election offices in Bhutto’s home province of Sindh had been destroyed in the unrest following her death.
Opposition officials scoffed at the statement, saying the vote need only be postponed in those districts.