Pervez Musharraf was a Pakistani military officer and politician who served as the tenth president of Pakistan from 2001 to 2008. He also served as the 10th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs from 1998 to 2001 and the 7th Chief of Army Staff from 1998 to 2007.
Politics of Bangladesh takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the Prime Minister of Bangladesh is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and parliament. The Constitution of Bangladesh was written in 1972, and has undergone seventeen amendments.
The Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML(N) or PML-N; Urdu: پاکستان مسلم لیگ (ن)) is a centre-right, conservative liberal political party in Pakistan. It is currently the third-largest party in the Senate and the largest in the National Assembly. The party was founded in 1993, when a number of prominent conservative politicians in the country joined hands after the dissolution of Islamic Democratic Alliance, under the leadership of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The party's platform is generally conservative, which involves supporting free markets, deregulation, lower taxes and private ownership. Although the party historically supported social conservatism, in recent years, the party's political ideology and platform has become more liberal on social and cultural issues; however, members have been accused of using Islamist populist rhetoric. Alongside the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Pakistan People's Party (PPP), it is one of the three major political parties of the country.
Asif Ali Zardari is a Pakistani politician serving as the 14th president of Pakistan since 10 March 2024. He is the president of Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians and was the co-chairperson of Pakistan People's Party.
Since its establishment in 1947, Pakistan has had a non-symmetric federal government and is a federal parliamentary democratic republic. At the national level, the people of Pakistan elect a bicameral legislature, the Parliament of Pakistan. The parliament consists of a lower house called the National Assembly, which is elected directly via first-past-the-post voting, and an upper house called the Senate, whose members are chosen by elected provincial legislators. The head of government, the Prime Minister, is elected by the majority members of the National Assembly and the head of state, the President, is elected by the Electoral College, which consists of both houses of Parliament together with the four provincial assemblies. In addition to the national parliament and the provincial assemblies, Pakistan also has more than five thousand elected local governments.
A civil war has been going on in Syria since 2011, following the events of the 2011 Syrian Revolution, which was part of the international wave of protest known as the Arab Spring. The government, headed by Bashar al-Assad, son of previous leader Hafez al-Assad, is based in Damascus, the traditional capital. The Ba'athist government conducts Presidential elections and parliamentary elections to the People's Assembly.
The 1999 military takeover in Pakistan was a bloodless coup d'état initiated by the military staff at the Joint Staff HQ working under the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and Chief of Army Staff General Pervez Musharraf. The instigators seized control of the civilian government of the popularly elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on 12 October 1999. On 14 October, General Musharraf, acting as the country's Chief Executive, issued a controversial provisional order that suspended the Constitution of Pakistan.
General elections were held in Pakistan on 18 February 2008 to elect members of the 13th National Assembly and the four Provincial Assemblies.
A referendum to confirm the presidential candidate Bashar al-Assad was held in Syria on 27 May 2007, after the People's Council of Syria unanimously voted to propose the incumbent for a second term on 10 May 2007.
An indirect presidential election was held in Pakistan on 6 October 2007. This was before dissolution of parliament for the following general election to be held in 2008. The Pakistani legislature elected incumbent Pervez Musharraf by an overwhelming majority. The near-unanimous nature of Musharraf's victory was made possible by the absence of two key political opposition leaders, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto. Nawaz Sharif had attempted to return to Pakistan before the election but was deported back into exile by the ruling government because of a gross violation of the agreement he had signed with the current regime to stay out of Pakistan and its politics for a period of ten years. Benazir Bhutto had also announced her intention to return to Pakistan for the elections but ultimately decided not to do so. It was widely assumed that her decision was the result of an arrangement she made with Musharraf.
A constitutional referendum on electoral reform was held in Turkey on 21 October 2007. After the aborted attempt to elect the next president in May 2007, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan introduced substantial electoral reforms in parliament which were then passed with the votes of Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party and the opposition Motherland Party.
A state of emergency was declared by President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf on 3 November 2007 which lasted until 15 December 2007, during which the Constitution of Pakistan was suspended. When the state of emergency was declared, Musharraf controversially held both positions of President and Chief of Army Staff. He later resigned as army chief 25 days into the emergency on 28 November. The state of emergency and its responses are generally attributed to the controversies surrounding the re-election of Musharraf during the presidential election on 6 October 2007, including his holding of both offices of President and Chief of Army Staff at the time.
General elections were held in Pakistan on 10 October 2002 to elect the 12th National Assembly and four Provincial Assemblies. The elections were held under the military government of Pervez Musharraf. The two mainstream parties, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N) had several restrictions imposed on them and their leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were in exile. In order to address the restrictions, PPP created the Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) under the leadership of Ameen Faheem, to contest the elections on its behalf. The PML-N meanwhile, suffering from the party's division into two factions: one that remained loyal to Sharif and were contesting the elections under the leadership of Javed Hashmi, and the other which had broken away to form the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League (Q) (PML-Q) under the leadership of Mian Muhammad Azhar. The emergence of the PML-Q marked the beginning of multi-party politics in the country, bringing an end to the decade-long two-party system between the PPP and PML-N.
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto took place on 27 December 2007 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan and then-leader of the opposition party Pakistan People's Party, had been campaigning ahead of elections scheduled for January 2008. Shots were fired at her after a political rally at Liaqat National Bagh, and a suicide bomb was detonated immediately following the shooting. She was declared dead at 18:16 local time, at Rawalpindi General Hospital. Twenty-three other people were killed by the bombing. Bhutto had previously survived a similar attempt on her life that killed at least 180 people, after her return from exile two months earlier. Following the event, the Election Commission of Pakistan postponed the general elections by a month, which saw Bhutto's party win.
Events from the year 2007 in Pakistan.
Parliamentary elections were held in Syria on 7 May 2012 to elect the members of the Syrian People's Council. The elections followed the approval of a new constitution in a referendum on 26 February 2012.
Presidential elections were held on 30 July 2013 in Pakistan to elect the 12th President of Pakistan. Incumbent President Asif Ali Zardari’s term was scheduled to expire on 8 September 2013; and as such, Article 41 of the Constitution of Pakistan required the elections to be held no later than 8 August 2013. The Electoral College of Pakistan – a joint sitting of the Senate, National Assembly and Provincial Assemblies – were tasked with electing a new president to succeed President Zardari, who declined to seek a second term in office. After the Pakistan Peoples Party and its allies boycotted the presidential election, the two candidates were Mamnoon Hussain backed by the Pakistan Muslim League (N), and Wajihuddin Ahmed backed by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. Agra-born Hussain was elected president by a majority securing 432 votes. The elections were the first time in Pakistani history where a civilian president was elected while an incumbent civilian President was still in office, completing a historic and democratic transition of power that began with the 2013 General Elections.
A constitutional referendum was held in the Republic of the Congo on 25 October 2015 regarding a proposal to change the constitution, primarily to modify the rules regarding presidential terms.
A constitutional referendum was held in Egypt between 20 and 22 April 2019, The main proposed amendments were re-establishing the presidential term to six years, from four previously, and removing the limit of two terms on the president, thereby allowing President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to potentially remain in power until 2030. The changes were approved by 88.83% of voters who voted, with a 44% turnout.
Electoral fraud in Pakistan has history intertwined with military interventions and legal obstacles against political dissenters, impacting the democratic process. Since its inception in 1947, Pakistan experienced alternating phases of democracy and authoritarianism, with the first general elections held only in 1970. The early governance was managed by a Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, tasked with both administrative functions and drafting a constitution.
