Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is "desperate" to crush his critics, an opposition leader said yesterday, after police detained several senior members of an alliance trying to obstruct the military ruler's pursuit of another term in office.
Police swept the Pakistani capital late on Saturday, arresting at least four senior figures in the opposition coalition, the All Parties Democratic Movement, which has announced its lawmakers will resign from parliament to deny legitimacy to Musharraf's reelection.
A presidential vote by federal and provincial legislators is scheduled for Oct. 6. The opposition claims Musharraf is not constitutionally qualified to run while he still holds the powerful position of army chief. Musharraf has offered to resign his military post, but only after he is voted in as president.
Security officials said police in Islamabad had orders to take some 35 opposition leaders into preventive custody -- many of them linked to Nawaz Sharif -- the prime minister overthrown by Musharraf in a 1999 coup -- or a coalition of Islamist parties opposed to the president's alliance with the US.
"Musharraf has now become desperate to crush the opposition in order to unconstitutionally and illegally become president for another term," said Ahsan Iqbal, spokesman for Sharif's party, a key member of the opposition alliance.
Iqbal said many senior opposition leaders, including himself, have gone into hiding.
"The government cannot break our resolve to struggle for democracy through such fascist tactics," Iqbal said by mobile phone.
Police served a warrant on Javed Hashmi, acting president of Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N, at an apartment complex for lawmakers on Saturday. The warrant said he would be jailed for 30 days to stop him from making inflammatory speeches at protests where "miscreants" could "cause disruption and acts of sabotage and terrorism."
"They are ruling the country with the gun in hand," Hashmi told a reporter at his apartment, where four armed police stood guard outside. "They think that the [military] uniform, not the people of Pakistan, are the source of power."
Raja Zafarul Haq, chairman of Sharif's party, was detained, as were Hafiz Hussain Ahmed and Mian Mohammed Aslam, lawmakers from a religious coalition opposed to Musharraf.
The sweep mirrored tactics used to ensure no crowds turned out to welcome Sharif when he tried to return from exile on Sept. 10. Hundreds of opposition activists were briefly jailed to prevent them reaching Islamabad airport. Sharif was swiftly expelled to Saudi Arabia.
Musharraf was nominated to run by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q party.
Members of some parties have asked the Supreme Court to declare Musharraf ineligible to run for president and pledged to mount street protests.
Anti-Musharraf lawyers said they would blockade the Election Commission to prevent the general from filing his nomination papers on Thursday.
Federal and city government officials could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Musharraf's popularity and his power have eroded since his botched effort to fire the Supreme Court's chief justice earlier this year. His administration is also struggling to contain a surge in Islamic militancy.
Underscoring the threat, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden urged Pakistanis to rebel against Musharraf.
Musharraf has called for moderate political forces to unite to defeat extremism and has held talks on a possible power-sharing deal with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, a liberal vowing to return on Oct. 18 after eight years of self-exile.
Bhutto has also threatened to withdraw her lawmakers from parliament if Musharraf does not compromise.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS