LAHORE, Dec 22: President Pervez Musharraf will take the confidence vote from the electoral college within 30 days of the approval of the constitutional package, an MMA leader who negotiated the agreement with the ruling party said on Monday.

Talking to Dawn and later in a statement, Liaquat Baloch said the term of Gen Musharraf as president would start from November last year when he took over as the head of state by virtue of the April 30 referendum. He said reports that Gen Musharraf’s five-year tenure would start from the day he succeeded Rafiq Tarar were based on some misunderstanding.

Leaders of the two sides are due to meet in Islamabad on Tuesday to finalize the package.

He was of the view that superior courts’ judges should show broad-mindedness and help the government and the MMA resolve the deadlock on the question of their retirement age.

Mr Baloch said the MMA and the ruling party had agreed to set up a committee under the leadership of the prime minister — with all chief ministers as its members — to reform the local government system and the police laws. The committee’s recommendations would be implemented by the provincial legislatures, he added.

In reply to a question, Mr Baloch said the MMA was “not” in favour of disallowing anyone to become prime minister for a third time. In fact, the alliance had taken up the matter with the PML-Q and had told the negotiators that the restriction was undemocratic.

But, he said, the ruling party argued that the restriction was also applicable to the president and thus it should not be assumed that the prime minister had been singled out.

The MMA, he said, then told the PML-Q leadership that two different yardsticks had been provided by the constitution for the accountability of the president and the prime minister and thus it would not be fair to treat them on a par on the question of candidacy for a third term.

He pointed out that a simple majority of the National Assembly members could remove the prime minister in case the house did not want him in the top slot any more. But the impeachment of the president was an uphill task as it could be carried out only with a two-thirds majority of both houses of parliament.

Mr Baloch said the two sides stuck to their points of view because of which the restriction was still in place.

He clarified that the restriction had not been imposed through some constitutional amendment. Instead, it was made effective by an amendment to the Political Parties Act. According to him, any party could remove the restriction with a simple majority in the two houses.

Under the existing law, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto are not eligible to become the head of government as both of them have already ruled the country twice.

When it was pointed out that the ARD and lawyers community were questioning the parliament’s authority to fuse the LFO with the constitution as in their opinion it would change the very character of the basic law, the MMA leader argued that this was not the first time that such a situation had arisen.

He recalled that the opposition had protested against the constitutional amendments made by the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. But, those amendments stayed despite protests.

Then, he said, Nawaz Sharif got some amendments passed without a debate which provoked the opposition to lodge strong protests. But opposition legislators could not get the amendments reversed.

Mr Baloch said the ARD and the lawyers had the right to have their own opinion on all subjects. But, he added, if some amendment was passed by a two-thirds majority of both houses, then its validity could not be questioned.