Benazir lawyers file amended petition

Lawyers for former premier Benazir Bhutto yesterday filed an amended petition in the Sindh High Court, challenging her disqualification and urging it to cancel the new constitutional amendments, court officials and lawyers said.

On Thursday, the court told Bhutto's lawyers to file the amended petition to bring it into conformity with the new constitutional amendments announced a day earlier by President General Pervez Musharraf.

The amended petition urged the court to cancel the new controversial election laws which bar Bhutto from running in the coming elections.

The new election laws bar a convicted person from running in elections or holding a public office. Bhutto, who faces at least 12 corruption cases, has been given three-year prison term each in two separate cases by a court for abstaining from its proceedings.

Calling the election laws unconstitutional, the petition also urged the court to withdraw the corruption cases against Bhutto.

In the petition, Bhutto has challenged her disqualification and said that she had gone abroad in 1998 after she had been exempted by the accountability court from personal attendance in the corruption case.

The petition also urged the court to cancel the constitutional amendments which have given sweeping powers to the president to dismiss the elected parliament and formalised the role of the army in politics through the controversial National Security Council.

The court will hear the petition from August 27.

Also yesterday, Bhutto urged the nation to unite with democratic forces and support her Pakistan People's Party candidates.

"On October 10th, we, the people of Pakistan, will vote for a new national government," she said in an open letter. The military regime is telling us that they know what is best for the country.

The ruling generals are saying that the people of Pakistan are incapable of making the right decisions," said Bhutto's letter, released from her party's Islamabad office.

"The PPP believes that only the people of Pakistan, have the power to choose their own government."

She said that Musharraf has done little to improve education, health and prosperity during his three-year rule.

"When the PPP is elected... we bring new opportunity, new jobs, and new hope for you, for your children, and for your families," she said.

But military rule brings repression, miseries and poverty, she added.