Pakistan's presidential election next week to choose a successor to Pervez Musharraf will be a triangular fight after the Election Commission announced its final list of candidates yesterday.
Pakistan People's Party leader Asif Ali Zardari is well poised to win the race against two other candidates, ex-chief judge Saeed uz Zaman Siddiqui and Mushahid Hussain.
“It's a three-way contest now," Election Commission secretary Kanwar Dilshad told AFP.
Zardari, the widower of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, is seen as a controversial figure because of past allegations of corruption and misdeeds during his wife's troubled spells in office, between 1988 and 1996.
Siddiqui has been nominated by the party of another former premier, Nawaz Sharif, who won the second highest number of seats after the PPP in February polls, but recently quit the coalition government in a row over sacked judges.
Hussain will represent the party allied with former president Musharraf whose August 18 resignation in the face of impeachment charges triggered the election.
Around 700 votes of federal and provincial lawmakers are up for grabs in the elections with the PPP commanding a majority in the 342-member national assembly and two of the four provincial assemblies.