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Musharraf’s tango with two former PMs |
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Harjit Singh
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf would be accused of pursuing double standard if he welcomes former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to the country when she flies back home on October 18, as claimed by her party leaders. This will be after a little more than a month of another exiled Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, being shunted out to Saudi Arabia despite a Supreme Court order which said there was nothing to stop him from returning home. Musharraf can be accused of advancing his political designs by welcoming one former Prime Minister and sending back another one which is against the level playing principle. His discriminatory behaviour became clear when in order to save his Presidency, Musharraf flew down to Abu Dhabi for a meeting with Benazir Bhutto. He sent his trouble shooter, Tariq Aziz, to London to hammer out a deal with Bhutto on cooperating with Musharraf in his re-election in return for a power-sharing agreement, and withdrawing the cases against her and her husband about corruption and money laundering. On the other hand, Musharraf has waged a campaign of witch-hunting against Nawaz Sharif just because he does not fit into his scheme of things to retain power. The corruption cases against Sharif have been reopened and he was shown the arrest warrant when he landed at the airport in Islamabad. Sharif was asked to choose between jail and Jeddah while the National Accountability Bureau has withdrawn similar cases against Bhutto to encourage her to agree on a power-sharing agreement.
So much so that Musharraf is ready to amend the Constitution to make way for Bhutto to become Prime Minister for the third time. The constitutional mandate for Musharraf to continue to be the Army Chief while holding the post of President comes to an end in December and that is why he is seeking re-election from the present Assemblies before this deadline. After December, he is afraid that he will lose the right to continue as Army Chief and if he resigns from the military post, the rule of a Government servant being banned from holding any elective position before two years of his retirement would come into force. Musharraf will lose both the Presidency and the Army post unless the Constitution is amended with the help of Bhutto’s party.
Musharraf’s personal agenda, however, holds no water in the eyes of the judiciary. While he can pursue his political objectives, he cannot arbitrarily keep the other exiled Prime Minister away from the country on the pretext of a so-called agreement Sharif is said to have inked with the Musharraf regime after his ouster in 1999, to live in exile in Saudi Arabia, for ten years. Both Sharif and his brother, Shahbaz, deny having signed any agreement. It is notable that while hearing a petition from Shahbaz Sharif, the reinstated Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry asked the Attorney General to produce the agreement. The Government failed to meet the court demand. It was argued instead that the Saudi Arabian ruler had intervened and helped reach the agreement and the original of the agreement was with the royal family in Riyadh. The court was told that efforts would be made to have the agreement, but the promise has remained unfulfilled. Now, Shahbaz’s son and Nawaz Sharif’s nephew has filed a petition in the Supreme Court accusing the Government of contempt of court. If the petition is upheld and the court reiterates its judgment that Sharif has the right to return, Musharraf will be on a new course of confrontation with the judiciary. The tempers will be running high after the return of Benazir Bhutto to Pakistan and a possible return of the wife of Nawaz Sharif, Kulsum, next month. By that time the petition against the Government’s refusal to honour the Supreme Court judgment would have been disposed of. Meanwhile, no final word has been said about the power-sharing agreement with Bhutto. If she returns to Pakistan to lead her party in elections without an agreement with Musharraf, the President will have an additional problem on his already full plate. The last option for Musharraf to stem the political tide against him and to put off the elections indefinitely will be the imposition of emergency or martial law in the name of national stability and security. Musharraf probably thinks that the national interest of Pakistan is secure so long as his interests are not in danger.
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