Asif Ali Zardari becomes the President of Pakistan today after winning the presidential election. He secured 479 votes out of 702. His opponents, Retired Chief Justice Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui received 153 elctoral votes and Senator Mushahid Hussein received 43. Asif’s victory in three provinces is overwhelming, especially in Sindh where his opposing candidates couldn’t get a single vote. Only in Punjab Assembly Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqi is able to get more votes than Asif.
The vote by the two houses of parliament and four provincial assemblies forms the 1,170-member, but 702-vote, electoral college. According to a Dawn update:
‘Asif Ali Zardari secured 281 votes out of the 426 valid votes polled in the parliament,’ chief election commissioner Qazi Mohammad Farooq said. He has secured 458 out of 702 electoral college votes, according to partial Election Commission results.
Asif Zardari is the 13th President of Pakistan. The ones who have been President before him include: Iskandar Mirza, Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry, Zia-ul-Haq, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Waseem Sajjad, Farooq Laghari, Waseem Sajjad, Rafiq Tarar and Pervaiz Musharraf. Waseem Sajjad has twice been the President of Pakistan.
You guys are living in fool’s paradise if you think that the future of democracy is bright in Pakistan. If you think that another “chance” for these people will somehow change Pakistan, your hopes are akin to hoping that rotten eggs can be made edible if you beat them enough.
You can romanticize the virtues of democracy all you want, and it does make for a good punch line but keep this is mind, people are more than capable of making wrong decisions collectively!!! Mark my words, I will be writing them again on this very forum when this joke of a democracy fails yet again in Pakistan and you see yourselves in a never ending cycle.
Today I am ashamed to be a Pakistani. If one wants to see how corrupt and unethical a nation we are, look no further than our honorable President or the sheep herd we have elected as our parliamentarians.
Ai meray piyaray watan…
kar raha tha ghum-i-jahaan ka hisaab
aaj tum yaad bey hisaab aaye (-faiz)
As a nation we seem to fall into one abyss after another. God save Pakistan and the dreams of our founding fathers.
@ Meengla…
wow…rather vocal and forceful job of defending Mr. Zaradri here I must say…..the passion is visible…
However, a question if I may…in light of the swiss government dropping (the last?) of the money laundering cases againt Zardari…He is set to receive an amout of USD 60 Million that will be ‘unfrozen’….I doubt that he made that type of money working overtime at the firm or by a brilliant dot com start up that he worked on from prison or when he was a federal minister….
you say that he hasnt been convicted by a court of law…true…but then you think the courts…our courts never falter and are infallible…so I would like to correct that assumption…
additionally…leaving everything else aside…any theories on how he came by that cool 60 million? …cant wait to hear you defend that one …
Ah Yes….
so it is in Mr. Zaradari’s capable hands we find ourselves in :)
Happy days are here again….
I should think that you wont be able to buy or sell a goat in a remote village in Pakistan without a tap on your shoulder asking you to cough up 10% of the transaction…..
Wel finally the curtain is raised over all ambiguties – this is democracy – he has won with a majority no matter what people opine about him.
So let the democracy flourish in the country