General Pervez Musharraf gave his strongest hint on Wednesday night that he will continue to run Pakistan after the general election on Thursday, and will dismiss the new prime minister if necessary.
In a TV address to the nation, he declared that, three years after he seized power in a coup, he was returning Pakistan to democracy.
He said he was resigning as ”chief executive” — the title he gave himself when he seized power — and would hand over ”full executive powers” to the new civilian government.
But he added pointedly: ”I also want to say that one power I shall always keep, about which there will be no compromise, and that is the solidarity and survival of Pakistan and the running of the government free from corruption and dishonesty.”
Musharraf’s comments suggest that he is fully prepared to use controversial new powers that allow him to sack the prime minister and dismiss Parliament if he wants to.
Musharraf will remain president of Pakistan after the elections. He is also chief of the army and will head a new national security council with control of Pakistan’s nuclear and foreign policy.
He has barred his two biggest political enemies — former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif — from contesting the election.
On Wednesday night he said Pakistan stood on the threshold of ”genuine” democracy.
”We are at the crossroads of history and about to start a new democratic era,” he said, in uniform and beneath a portrait of Pakistan’s founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah. ”So vote diligently.”
But political rivals and Western observers have accused him of rigging the elections in advance to favour the candidates who support him.
They allege that candidates with popular support have been pressured into joining the Pakistan Muslim League/Quaid-i-Azam (PML), which enjoys the backing of the military regime.
”The playing field has been tilted in the party’s favour,” a Western diplomat said.
The latest opinion polls show that Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party is running neck-and-neck with the PML.
Musharraf insisted this week that Thursday’s national and provincial elections would be ”free, fair and transparent”.
He contrasted them with the ”sham democracy” of the past — a reference to the chaotic Bhutto and Sharif governments of the 1980s and 1990s, which, he said, had ”taken the nation towards ruin”.
The two former prime ministers have been the president’s most trenchant critics during the campaign. Musharraf accuses them both of corruption.
In his TV address he avoided referring to them by name, calling them only ”the two leaders”.
He has threatened to jail Bhutto if she ever returns to Pakistan from London. Sharif is safely in exile in Saudi Arabia.
With 83 parties contesting the elections, no reliable opinion polls, and many tight contests at local levels, the result of the parliamentary election is too close to predict. — (c) Guardian Newspapers 2002