President Pervez Musharraf’s spokesman on Monday rejected fresh pressure at home and abroad for president to step down after his allies were trounced in parliamentary elections.
A US senator who monitored the polls one week ago said on Musharraf should be given a “graceful way to move”, Pakistan Muslim League chief Nawaz Sharif said the sooner the president stepped down, the better.
Musharraf’s spokesman, Major General Rashid Qureshi, said the president had been elected for a five-year period last year and that his position should not be determined by the results of the parliamentary elections.
“Except for Nawaz Sharif it is clear that no one else is talking about the president leaving.” – Qureshi told private news channel.
PML-N formed a coalition with the Pakistan People’s Party last week, after their groupings ousted Musharraf’s backers from government in the elections.
They are seeking further allies to get them the two-thirds majority with which they could theoretically impeach the president, whose popularity has slumped amid rising food prices and a wave of militancy.
In Washington, Joe Biden, one of three senators who observed the elections along with former White House hopeful John Kerry and Senator Chuck Hagel, discussed Musharraf’s options in a television interview.
Asked on ABC television if he thought it would be good for President Musharraf to prepare an exit strategy to resign or retire to avoid being forced out by a hostile parliament, Biden said: “Probably”.
Britain’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper cited an anonymous aide as saying that Musharraf was readying such a strategy after PPP and PML-N won the elections.
“I firmly believe if they (political parties) do not focus on old grudges — and there’s plenty in Pakistan — and give him a graceful way to move” then Musharraf would leave office, Biden added.
Musharraf’s spokesman rejected Biden’s comments and said the president was ready to work with the new government.
“The president has been elected for a period of five years by the assemblies of Pakistan, which have been elected by the Pakistani people and not by senators from the US. So I don’t think he needs to respond to anything that is said by these people in their capacity.” – Musharraf’s spokesman .
The opposition’s stance on Musharraf is still unclear, with Sharif calling almost daily for him to step down but the PPP avoiding outright calls for him to resign.
The PPP’s most likely candidate to be prime minister, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, was quoted in local media as saying all talk of impeaching Musharraf should wait until the new parliament was sworn in.
Sharif said on Monday that if Musharraf stayed on, then judges sacked by him under emergency rule in November should be restored so they can decide the legality of Musharraf’s re-election as president in October last year.