Pakistan’s Musharraf Wins Confidence Vote

Pakistan’s military ruler won a vote of confidence from both houses of parliament and the country’s four provincial assemblies on Thursday in a carefully orchestrated process that empowers him to finish out his five-year term as president.

The opposition walked out in protest and denounced the proceedings as a sham.

The balloting on President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s future follows a surprise deal with a coalition of hardline Islamic parties that agreed to support his claim to the presidency in return for a promise that he step down as army chief by the end of 2004.

Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup, has held both positions since winning a controversial presidential referendum in 2002 in which he was the only candidate. His term expires in 2007.

The Senate on Thursday voted 56-1 and the lower house voted 191-0 to give Musharraf the vote of confidence he sought, but scores of opposition lawmakers staged a walkout in protest. The assemblies of the North West Frontier Province, Baluchistan and Sindh all voted unanimously in favor of Musharraf, with large numbers of opposition legislators abstaining or walking out.

In the NWFP, for instance, Musharraf won by a vote of 30-0, with the rest of the members in the 124-seat assembly refusing to take part. Voting in Punjab was ongoing, but Musharraf was assured of victory as he only needed a majority of the cumulative votes in all four provincial assemblies.

Musharraf’s supporters have hailed the agreement as a sign of the general’s commitment to democratic rule, but opponents have derided it as window-dressing on his dictatorship.

Ahsan Iqbal, the chief coordinator of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, called Thursday’s proceedings a “mockery of democracy.”

“Musharraf has staged another drama to get his illegal presidency validated,” he told The Associated Press. “It is a total fraud. We don’t accept these results. We do not accept him as president.”

Pakistan’s 1973 constitution was amended earlier this week to give the general extraordinary powers – including the right to dissolve parliament and sack the prime minister by decree.

The amendment passed with the support of the Islamic coalition, the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, after the party reached a deal with Musharraf’s supporters.

The religious coalition’s lawmakers stayed on the sideline of Thursday’s confidence vote, neither supporting nor opposing the general.

Had Musharraf lost the confidence vote he would have been forced to resign, though that was never considered a possibility.

Musharraf remains the most powerful figure in Pakistan, though he has handed over day-to-day handling of the country to the prime minister, a political ally.

The general survived two assassination attempts in December, the last a dual suicide car bombing near his army residence in Rawalpindi, a city near the capital Islamabad. Musharraf was unhurt, but 16 people were killed and dozens injured.

Musharraf’s supporters say they hope the confidence vote gives him added clout ahead of a key South Asian summit that begins in Islamabad on Sunday.