Uneasy win for Musharraf

Lawmakers Saturday overwhelmingly endorsed a new five-year presidential term for Gen. Pervez Musharraf, according to unofficial results, but the legitimacy of the vote has yet to be decided by the Supreme Court.

The lopsided balloting, held simultaneously by Pakistan’s national parliament and four provincial assemblies, was denounced as a sham by Musharraf’s opponents. The government praised it as a show of orderly democracy.

The high court is to rule this month on whether Musharraf is eligible under the constitution to seek a new presidential term while still serving as head of Pakistan’s powerful military, a role he has promised to relinquish once his victory is sealed. Opponents still hope to see the 64-year-old leader retroactively disqualified.

That left Musharraf and his allies celebrating an uneasy triumph.

“It’s the day of the general -- apparently,” said Adeel Sabir, an anchor on the Dawn television news channel.

Despite an opposition boycott, the general portrayed the vote as an unqualified show of support.

“A majority, a vast majority, have voted for me,” he told reporters during a brief appearance in which he wore civilian clothes rather than his army uniform.

Although the formal outcome is legally on hold, the balloting was seen as a watershed in Musharraf’s months-long struggle to remain in power despite an outpouring of public antipathy.

The Pakistani leader is considered a key U.S. ally in the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and events here are being closely watched by the Bush administration. Musharraf has sent troops to battle Islamic militants who have found shelter in Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, but that military push is foundering.

Saturday’s vote took place under tight security, with phalanxes of riot police and barbed-wire barricades around the national and provincial assembly buildings. But protesters managed to stage small demonstrations near the voting venues.

Outside the regional parliament in the restive North-West Frontier Province, lawyers in their trademark black suits and starched shirts burned an effigy of the general in uniform and pelted an armored police vehicle with rocks. Police fired tear gas to disperse them.

The general had little meaningful competition in the vote. The two other contestants -- Wajihuddin Ahmed, a former Supreme Court justice representing a lawyers group, and Makhdoom Amin Fahim, vice chairman of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s party -- described their candidacies as largely symbolic.

More than 150 opposition lawmakers quit their seats in protest before the balloting, and Bhutto’s party abstained, but that made little dent in Musharraf’s near-total support. He won 671 of the 685 votes cast in the parliament and the provincial assemblies, officials said.

In the months before the vote, the Pakistani leader’s opponents had challenged him in court and staged anti-government demonstrations. Musharraf responded with a harsh crackdown on opposition activists, the media and lawyers groups that had led the legal charge against him.

Like much that happens in Pakistani politics, Saturday’s vote was an exercise in brinkmanship: The Supreme Court ruling that put the results on hold came only a day before the balloting.

Also on the eve of the vote, Musharraf signed into law a measure granting an amnesty for Bhutto on corruption charges, the cornerstone of an emerging power-sharing accord between the two.

The crux of the matter is whether Pakistan, which has spent nearly half its 60-year history under military rule, will emerge from months of turmoil with a civilian government. Under heavy pressure, Musharraf has pledged to give up the military uniform he calls his “second skin” -- but not until after his reelection is ratified.

Opponents also decried the fact that the election was held by outgoing lawmakers, only weeks before their terms expire. The 2002 elections for provincial and national assemblies were widely believed to have been rigged in favor of Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup.

Musharraf’s aides, though, insisted that the vote’s legitimacy would be upheld. “This election was fair and transparent,” Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said.

The five-hour vote was shown on nationwide television, with lawmakers stepping up to cast their ballots one by one. Veiled women, men in traditional long shirts and baggy pants, and parliamentarians in dapper Western suits approached the podium and dropped their folded ballots into translucent plastic containers.

Pakistanis appeared largely indifferent.

“It’s a selection, not an election,” shopkeeper Mohammed Aslam said with a shrug.

By contrast, parliamentary elections to be held by early next year are expected to have more of the trappings of a real campaign. Bhutto plans to return from self-imposed exile Oct. 18 and hopes to claim a third term as prime minister, but many in her party fear that her popularity has been damaged by her dealings with Musharraf, whom she repeatedly has called a dictator.

The day before Bhutto’s planned homecoming, the Supreme Court is scheduled to reconvene to hear arguments on whether Saturday’s vote was valid. Many observers fear that if the election results are thrown out by the court, Musharraf will declare emergency rule or even martial law.

That could delay the parliamentary elections and perhaps give the general a pretext for retaining his military role.

“At this point, I think he wouldn’t go away easily, whatever the court says,” said Azmat Hassan, a former Pakistani diplomat who is a scholar at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. “He is likely to carry on.”

laura.king@latimes.com