Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf today faced mounting pressure from friends and foes to quit as the ruling coalition prepared a “comprehensive and solid” chargesheet to nail him in an impeachment motion to be brought in the special National Assembly session starting tomorrow.
“We will prepare a comprehensive and solid chargesheet that Musharraf will not be able to fight it... It is very necessary that he resigns himself, otherwise the impeachment will start,” Law Minister Farooq Naek said after the ruling coalition met to draw a battle plan to end Musharraf’s nine-year reign.
The document to be tabled in Parliament will charge Musharraf with violation of the Constitution and misconduct.
The 342-member lower house will meet at 5pm tomorrow for the session that is expected to decide the fate of the 64-year-old Musharraf, who has vowed not to quit and also ruled out dissolving the House to overcome the crisis facing him.
While there have been questions as to whether the coalition had the numbers in the two houses of Parliament — the National Assembly and the Senate — PPP chief Asif Ali Zardari said he was “110 per cent sure of the success of the impeachment process”.
“We had already completed the numbers game before launching such a vital move,” Zardari said in an interview to a Pakistani private channel last night. The Assembly has a strength of 442, and the motion will have to be passed by a two-third majority, that is, 295 members.
Cracks have already appeared in Musharraf's main ally, the PML(Q), with MP Sardar Bahadur Khan Sihar advising the president to gracefully quit and claiming to have the “support” of a dozen MPs and a couple of senators.
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Four independent senators from Federally Administered Tribal Areas have also asked Musharraf to quit and pledged to support the impeachment motion.
Sihar said he had advised Musharraf that he avail of the opportunity of “a safe exit” provided by Zardari and step down in the larger interest of the nation and as the country could not sustain any more conflict.
“Enough is enough. Now is the right time for Mr Musharraf to quit,” the PML(Q) lawmaker was quoted as saying by The News.
Former federal minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, one of Musharraf’s steadfast allies, said the president should step down as the ruling coalition would win the “numbers game” if an impeachment motion was moved in Parliament.
Senior PML-N leader Ishaq Dar said from tomorrow onwards the provincial assemblies of Punjab, North West Frontier Province, Sindh and Balochistan will pass resolutions asking Musharraf to seek a vote of confidence in Parliament.
Once this process is complete, the impeachment proceedings will get under way in the National Assembly or lower house of Parliament, he said.
In a fresh salvo against Musharraf, Zardari accused him of “misappropriating” a whopping $700 million of American aid to Islamabad for supporting the war on terror and said “rogue” ISI members could have benefitted from the scam.
The US, which had protected Musharraf against the onslaught of the PPP-led government which came to power after the February 18 elections, bluntly telling the ruling coalition that it should concentrate on other important tasks rather than the President's ouster, has so far not taken sides and termed the impeachment move as an "internal matter".
"Our grand old Musharraf has not been passing on all the $1 billion a year that the Americans have been giving for the armed forces.... We're talking about $700 million a year missing. The rest has been taken by 'Mush' for some scheme or the other and we've got to find it," 54-year-old Zardari told the The Sunday Times.
The PPP leader, who had refrained from openly confronting Musharraf till now despite pressure from ally Nawas Sharif's PML(N), said he had advised the president through a "common friend" to resign two months ago but he did not pay heed.
"Through a common friend, General Durrani, I had advised President Musharraf to resign two months back. But the President gave no reply," Zardari said.
Anti-Musharraf parties, including the Jamaat-e-Islami and some Balochistan-based nationalist parties currently sitting in opposition benches in the Senate, have a total of 274 members — 235 in the National Assembly and 39 in the Senate — which is short of the magic number of 295.
According to the latest count after by-polls in June, the PPP has 124 members in the assembly, PML-N 92, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam six and Awami National Party 13.
In the opposition PML-Q-dominated Senate, the PPP has 10 members, PML-N four, the Jamiat and its allies 18 and the ANP two, plus five others.
Several dissident PML-Q members and Baloch groups in the Senate are expected to throw their weight behind the impeachment motion.
Observers also believe the 27 independent members in both houses of Parliament, particularly those from tribal areas, will play a crucial role.
A joint meeting of the PPP and PML-N has been summoned tomorrow to discuss matters related to the impeachment motion, Information Minister Sherry Rehman said.
She said the coalition had done "comprehensive planning and concrete homework" while preparing the chargesheet against Musharraf.
"We want to avoid any ambiguity and misunderstanding over the issues."