ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf will take an oath of office as civilian president Thursday after quitting as army chief, his spokesman said, giving the first official schedule for the end of military rule.
Musharraf, who has ruled Pakistan since seizing power in a bloodless coup in 1999, will hang up his army uniform a day before being sworn in for a second five-year presidential term, the military added.
The move would meet a key demand of the international community outraged by his imposition of a state of emergency, but is unlikely to placate opposition leaders at home who are threatening to boycott general elections on January 8.
“President Musharraf will take the oath as a civilian president on the 29th and he will pay farewell visits to various military headquarters on the 27th and 28th,” spokesman Rashid Qureshi told AFP on Monday.
Last week a purged Supreme Court rubber-stamped Musharraf’s victory in an October presidential election, swatting away legal challenges arguing that as a serving officer, he was ineligible to stand.
Top military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said Musharraf would officially step down as army chief on Wednesday.
Confirmation of the timetable came as former premier Nawaz Sharif, the man whom Musharraf ousted eight years ago, applied to stand in the January vote.
A day after returning from exile to a hero’s welcome, Sharif was showered with rose petals as he filed his nomination papers in a courthouse in the eastern city of Lahore, his political fiefdom.
But he said the elections would only be acceptable if Musharraf lifted the state of emergency and withdrew an order suspending the constitution.
“Martial law and dictatorship are not in the country’s interest,” Sharif told reporters.
“My party will not become part of any coalition government under President Musharraf in future,” he added. “We believe that any government serving under Musharraf will be illegal and undemocratic.”
He said he was in favour of boycotting the elections but did not rule out his participation pending talks with other parties.
Benazir Bhutto, another ex-prime minister, also filed her papers Monday. Both opposition leaders say they had to do so ahead of a midnight deadline even if they later decide to pull out.
“We are concerned that elections will be rigged but we don’t want to leave the field empty,” Bhutto said at her family’s ancestral home in Larkana in rural southern Pakistan.
She reached out to Sharif, saying she was ready to form an alliance “with all moderate political parties.”
Sharif’s return, which came a month after Bhutto also ended her exile, ratchets up the pressure on Musharraf. Each served twice as premier between 1988 and 1999.
If Sharif forms a coalition with Bhutto he could cause major problems for Musharraf and secure defections from the president’s ruling party.
Analysts have questioned whether a Sharif-Bhutto alliance will stand the test of time.
Sharif is a religious conservative who once tried to have himself declared “commander of the faithful”, while the secular Bhutto is seen by the United States — keen to preserve Pakistan’s role in the fight against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban — as pro-Western.
Pakistani troops backed by gunship helicopters on Monday intensified an offensive against pro-Taliban militants who have seized much of the northwestern Swat valley, killing 20 militants including three commanders, officials said.
Pakistan’s attorney general Malik Muhammad Qayyum said earlier that Sharif may be ineligible because he was sentenced to life in jail on corruption and hijacking charges before he was banished in 2000.
He is however unlikely to be arrested, caretaker interior minister Hamid Nawaz Khan said, pointing out that Sharif had returned under a deal with the Saudi government.
