Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's allies are rejecting demands for his ouster, but some are calling for clipping his powers to ensure democracy can flourish in a nation that's been ruled more often by generals than civilians.
The divisions in the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) party reflect the precarious position of the former army strongman -- just as his opponents are getting ready to form a government after their victory in Feb. 18 elections.
The parties of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, together won nearly two-thirds of the seats in the National Assembly, the lower house of the parliament.
They want Musharraf to resign, saying he has trampled democracy, the judiciary and the media since taking power in a 1999 coup against Sharif. He was re-elected president in October by a parliament packed with his supporters.
Pervez Elahi, a close confidant of Musharraf and a senior PML-Q member, insisted on Thursday that Musharraf would not quit.
"There is no such proposal. Neither is he considering it," Elahi told reporters. "He has been elected president for five years. He will remain president for five years."
The pressure on Musharraf has raised the prospect of a new political crisis that could endanger Pakistan's return to democracy.
The US has continued to support Musharraf, who has backed Washington by fighting Taliban and al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan's rugged Afghan border areas. The government blamed an al-Qaeda-linked militant commander for Bhutto's Dec. 27 assassination.
Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, under the stewardship of her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, won 87 seats in the recent elections. Together with Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N party and other allies, the prospective coalition partners have 171 of the 272 seats in the National Assembly.
Sharif said on Wednesday the coalition would soon secure the two-thirds majority of 179 needed to change the Constitution and impeach Musharraf.
To impeach him, a two-thirds majority is also needed in the 100-member Senate, the upper house.
Pro-Musharraf parties have only a slender majority in the Senate after six senators announced this week that they would not toe the party line on votes that infringe on democracy.
Also on Thursday, Zardari met with Fazlur Rehman, head of the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema Islam party, to discuss possible power sharing. They told reporters they had agreed to work together.
They did not elaborate and only said such meetings would continue in the future.
Rehman's party, which opposes the cooperation with Washington in its war against terrorism, won six seats in the Feb. 18 elections.
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