Opposition parties in Pakistan have expressed outrage over the amendment of election rules to facilitate President Pervez Musharraf's bid to seek re-election, threatening to resign from the National and Provincial Assemblies.
Leaders of the All Parties Democratic Movement, a grouping of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal and small regional parties, which met in Islamabad on Sunday, termed the amendment ''a clear violation of the Constitution.''
''The amendment to the rules barring the returning officer from rejecting nomination papers has been made to benefit an individual and we condemn it,'' Raja Zafarul Haq, convener of the Joint Action Committee of the APDM and chairman of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz said.
''The APDM component parties have decided to resign from the national as well as provincial assemblies to block General Musharraf's re-election. All APDM parties will quit the assemblies and launch a mass protest movement the day President Musharraf's nomination papers are accepted by the Election Commission of Pakistan,'' Haq added.
He also informed the political leaders that Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party had contacted his party for the revival of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy.
The PML-N chairman said the alliance of over 30 opposition parties will hold rallies and public meetings on September 21 to protest the deportation of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif on September 10, arrest of APDM leaders and police brutality against PML-N workers.
MMA chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed also asserted that the alliance will quit its government in the North-West Frontier Province and coalition government in Balochistan. He said Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who heads a Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam faction, would abide by the decisions taken by the APDM.
However, Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani rejected the opposition's move, saying en-masse resignations will only cause the APDM embarrassment.
''The politics of resignations is failed politics,'' said Durrani.