General elections will be held on February 18 as planned and there is no possibility of rigging, said President Pervez Musharraf to a select group of six editors of the national media with whom he had a 90-minute chat at his camp office in Rawalpindi on Friday. Among the editors were Najam Sethi of Daily Times, Arif Nizami of The Nation, Zia Shahid of Khabrain, Sultan Lakhani of Express, Wamiq Zuberi of Business Recorder/Aaj and Qazi Aslam of KTN/Kawish group.The president said that he was determined to use the army and paramilitary forces before, during and after the elections to ensure law and order.
The president dilated at length on the three crises facing Pakistan at this “turbulent time”: the crisis of the transition to democracy, the crisis of the war against terrorism and extremism and the crisis of the economy if the first two crises could not be contained and resolved.
Nukes are safe: He referred to the erroneous perception and image of Pakistan in the world and exhorted the domestic media to help in restoring balance to the debate. He explained how, given the successful establishment of a National Command Authority and failsafe procedures that had been independently developed by the Pakistani nuclear establishment, there was no technical possibility at all of PakistanÂ’s nukes or any fissile material falling into the wrong hands or of any accidental detonation of such weapons. In theory, he said, if Al Qaeda ever managed to defeat the Pakistan Army militarily, or if Talibanised elements succeeded in contesting and winning the elections in Pakistan, then the nuclear programme could be hijacked. But in practice, he insisted, neither of these things was conceivable because Pakistanis would never vote for extremists and the army could not be defeated by terrorists.
No meeting: President Musharraf ruled out any possibility of a national government before the elections and said he did not intend to meet any opposition politician, and certainly not Shahbaz Sharif, even though he was going to the UK and Europe soon and intended to visit the home of his friend Brigadier Niaz in London. However, he said he was open to the idea of a national government after the elections.
Stability after polls: President Musharraf was worried about the post-election scenario because it would entail coalition governments which were known to be unstable. He thought no single party would be able to win a large enough majority to form a government in Islamabad. He thought political instability would distract from the war against extremism and terrorism and hurt the economy and scare away foreign investment and donors.