PAKISTAN:Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf's handpicked supreme court dismissed a string of legal challenges yesterday, clearing the way for his resignation as chief of army staff by the end of this week.
The court swiftly dismissed five petitions to his controversial October 6th re-election, in which the military ruler won 98 per cent of votes cast.
Meanwhile, opposition firebrand Imran Khan started a hunger strike in protest at Gen Musharraf's judicial manipulations. His former wife, Jemima, said he would not eat or drink until all deposed judges were reinstated.
Ensuring victory in yesterday's court cases was at the heart of Gen Musharraf's decision to impose emergency rule just over two weeks ago. To ensure the decision went his way Gen Musharraf suspended the constitution and fired the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.
Yesterday Mr Chaudhry and seven other independent-minded judges remained under house arrest, and the replacement bench clearly signalled its loyalties. In little more than an hour five anti-Musharraf petitions were quashed and lawyers for his opponents given hostile treatment.
The 10-judge bench, headed by the new chief justice, Abdul Hameed Dogar, threatened to jail one lawyer and remove his law licence if he persisted with a challenge to the president.
If, as seems likely, the court's final ruling on Thursday goes in his favour, Gen Musharraf will hand control of the nuclear-armed military to his deputy, former spy chief Lieut Gen Ashfaq Kiyani.
Faced with intense international criticism, an often strained-looking Gen Musharraf has become defensive.
"I took this decision in the best interest of Pakistan," he said on Sunday. "I could have said thank you and walked away. But this was not the right approach because I cannot watch this country go down in front of me."
But a day earlier he ignored warnings from visiting US deputy secretary of state John Negroponte that the emergency was battering his international credibility.