Musharraf can contest polls without giving up uniform

Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled yesterday that military ruler Pervez Musharraf can run for president next month while keeping his role as army chief, in a major blow to the opposition.
The court threw out a raft of legal challenges, which argued that Musharraf, a key US ally who led a coup eight years ago, was ineligible to run for another five-year term in office.
The decision will be closely watched not only in the nuclear-armed Islamic republic of 160 million people but also in Washington, where Musharraf remains vital to the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Flag-waving opposition supporters and anti-government lawyers waiting outside the imposing marble court building in Islamabad chanted "Shame! Shame!" and "Go, Musharraf! Go!" as the verdict was announced.
"The petitions hereby are dismissed as not maintainable," said Rana Bhagwandas, the head of the panel of nine judges hearing the petitions.
The verdict was by a 6-3 majority, court officials said.
Lawyers for Pakistan's opposition said Friday that they would appeal against a ruling that President Pervez Musharraf can stand for re-election while keeping his role as army chief.
The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a raft of petitions by the opposition that said Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, should not be allowed to contest the October 6 while still in uniform.
"We will appeal against the judgement tomorrow," said Akram Sheikh, one of the main lawyers for the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party, which is part of the opposition All Parties Democracy Movement.
Musharraf, 64, has promised to quit his military role by November 15 if he wins another five-year term in office on October 6. But he had not ruled out dissolving parliament or even imposing martial law if blocked by the court.
A senior official earlier told AFP that the government was "prepared for any eventuality" and warned that stopping the election process would "create a serious crisis in this country".
Musharraf has been at loggerheads with the Supreme Court since his botched attempt in March to remove the country's chief justice, a move that sparked mass protests and sent the president's popularity plummeting.
The appeals argued that Musharraf is ineligible to stand in the poll, that his dual role as president and army chief is illegal, and that the ballot should be by a new parliament due to be elected by early 2008.
Musharraf filed his nomination papers for the elections on Thursday amid tight security to prevent protests by the opposition.
Two rivals -- a retired judge who refused to swear allegiance to Musharraf after the coup and a senior member of Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party -- have also registered to run.
Dozens of opposition supporters were freed from jail overnight after chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the man Musharraf failed to sack, ordered their release in yet another challenge to his authority.
Musharraf faces still more difficulties after the opposition All Parties Democratic Movement said late Thursday that its lawmakers had decided to resign from parliament on Tuesday, a move that would deprive the poll of credibility.
The same day, the chief minister of the Islamist-ruled North West Frontier Province would ask the governor to dissolve the provincial assembly, the only one in the country controlled by the opposition.
Meanwhile the court on Friday ordered Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and other officials to explain the deportation of former premier Nawaz Sharif from Pakistan when he tried to return from seven years in exile on September 10.
Pakistani authorities bundled Sharif, the man Musharraf toppled in 1999, on to a plane to Saudi Arabia in defiance of an order from Chaudhry that the ex-prime minister had an "inalienable right" to come home.
Musharraf is also battling a wave of Islamist violence that was unleashed when government forces stormed the al-Qaeda-linked Red Mosque in Islamabad in July.
One Pakistani soldier was killed and 12 more injured early Friday when a roadside bomb hit their convoy near the northwestern border with Afghanistan, the army said.