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| Musharraf rules out emergency, postponement of elections | | |
Islamabad, Mar 20
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf
has said parliamentary elections due this year will be held as
scheduled and ruled out imposition of emergency in the country.
''Neither will emergency be imposed nor are elections going to be
postponed,'' Gen Musharraf said in a GEO TV talk show last night.
Gen Musharraf chose to appear in the talk show ten days after a
crisis, which gripped the country in the wake of his
decision to send a reference against the sitting Chief Justice
Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to the Supreme Judicial Council under
charges of misconduct and misuse of authority.
The suspended Chief Justice is to appear before the council for
the third time tomorrow to face the charges amid fresh countrywide
protest call by leading Islamic opposition alliance, Mutahida
Majlis-e-Amal (MMA).
The MMA rally would also be joined by former Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League, an MMA spokesman told UNI here.
MMA chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad was briefly arrested along with
other MMA leaders here when he tried to break police cordon in front
of the parliament to reach the Supreme Court building.
Gen Musharraf said Rana Bhagwandas would assume office of the
acting Chief Justice as soon as he returns. ''We had to appoint
Justice Javed Iqbal as the acting CJ in the absence of Bhagwandas,
who proceeded on leave with the permission of Justice Iftikhar
Chaudhry,'' he said.
However, this was for the first time Gen Musharraf admitted his
failure in properly handling the situation, since the crisis
surfaced.
He said the judicial crisis was ''mishandled'' by him because he
had not promptly taken the nation into confidence on all the
relevant legal and constitutional issues. ''I think a government
spokesman, if not me, should have taken people into confidence,''
he added. |
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