Warns protests against the result won’t be tolerated

Islamabad, February 14:

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf pledged today that next week’s elections will be free and fair and on time, but warned that any protests against the result would not be tolerated.

Musharraf said that the success of the “mother of all elections” was crucial for international efforts to stabilise the violence-prone nuclear-armed nation, which remains a key ally in the US-led “war on terror”.

His stern warning came after the widower of assassinated former premier Benazir Bhutto said he would call for mass agitation if rigging denies his party victory.

“Despite all the insinuation and apprehensions, the elections will be free, fair, transparent and peaceful. It is my pledge to the nation,” Musharraf said at a special government conference shown live on state television.

“No disruption or violence will be allowed. If people think they can come on streets after the elections, nothing of that sort will be allowed,” added Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999.

Pakistan was convulsed by violence after Bhutto’s assassination at an election campaign rally in December, an event that also forced the postponement of elections by six weeks.

Musharraf also dismissed a series of opinion polls showing his popularity in freefall. The latest, commissioned by the BBC, showed nearly two thirds of people regard him as an obstacle to stability and three quarters want him to quit.

Shortly after the president spoke, Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari addressed

at least 20,000 Pakistan People’s Party supporters at a rally in the industrial city of Faisalabad.

Security was heavy with walk-through scanners and police checking those entering the venue, an AFP correspondent said. A bulletproof glass screen was placed at the stage where Zardari was set to speak.

Zardari earlier warned in an interview with AFP that he may call for civil disobedience if “pre-rigging” by the authorities robs his party of victory.

“We will call for all the political forces to get together, and together we shall decide how to take the people to the streets, how to do political agitation enough to get our point of view across,” he said late yesterday.

Zardari was set to pump up the crowds in a final push for the crucial battleground of Punjab province — home to more than half of the nuclear-armed nation’s 160 million people.

Meanwhile, the country was hit by fresh violence when a roadside bomb blast killed three soldiers in the troubled tribal region of Bajaur today, officials said. It was the fifth blast in Pakistan in six days.