Pakistan's big guns unite against Musharraf
Two of Pakistan’s most influential opposition leaders banded together today in an attack on President Pervez Musharraf’s regime, demanding he step down.
Former political opponents Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, both ex-prime ministers, appeared to be working towards a political alliance, brought together by the emergency rule imposed by Gen. Musharraf last Saturday.
Ms Bhutto hinted that any hopes of working together with the president were dead after she was put under house arrest for the second time in five days.
A massive security operation prevented Ms Bhutto from leaving her house to lead a planned protest procession to the capital Islamabad.
She said it was now likely her Pakistan People’s Party would boycott January’s parliamentary elections.
She added: “The upcoming election seems like nothing more that a stage-managed show to return the PML (ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q party) to power ... Now we’ve come to the conclusion that even if we get power, it will just be a show of power not substantive power.”
With the political turmoil deepening, US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was on his way to Pakistan and expected to reiterate Washington’s calls for Gen. Musharraf to lift the state of emergency.
Critics and chief international backers have said the restrictions imposed by the military leader would make it hard for upcoming parliamentary elections to be fair.
Earlier Ms Bhutto said gen Musharraf, whom she described as a hurdle to democracy, must resign both as president and army chief.
Asked whether she would serve under him in a future government, she said “No.”
But Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, a close Musharraf ally, said he doubted Ms Bhutto had closed the door completely to any cooperation with the general.
“She talks one thing but walks in a different way,” he said, claiming her comments were a reaction to declining public support for her party. “She knows the election result will be different from what she thought. That is why she is trying to create a disturbance.”
Ms Bhutto said once she was freed from detention, she would work to forge a broad alliance, including with Mr Sharif who is a long-time rival but shares her desire to end military rule.
He was ousted by Gen. Musharraf in the 1999 coup that brought the general to power. He attempted to return to Pakistan in September but was immediately deported.
“Once I’m out, I intend to build a broadbased alliance with a one-point agenda to restore democracy,” Ms Bhutto said. “I will work with all political leaders ... I will work with Nawaz Sharif.
“We may work side-by-side. The important thing is that we both believe democracy must be restored.”
Mr Sharif, who is in exile in Saudi Arabia, backed her call.
“What I’m hearing on TV, her statements today that she has cut off all her links with Pervez Musharraf and wants him to resign from both offices, I think it is a positive development and a step toward achieving the objectives of the opposition,” he said.
Sharif, who was thrown from office in a 1999 coup by Gen. Musharraf, said he had written to Ms Bhutto three days ago offering to work together if she severed links with the president.
“Let’s see how she replies and what she says,” Sharif said.
Mr Sharif, who was deported from Pakistan when he tried to return in September, said he believed the opposition was “beginning to get together.”
“That is the need of the hour because single-handedly to fight dictatorship is going to be a difficult task,” he said. “If the entire opposition gets united on a one-point agenda to restore the judiciary all the problems confronting Pakistan today will be solved.”
He claimed that would lead to an end of the emergency, military rule and allow the country to hold free and fair elections.
Gen. Musharraf says he imposed the emergency because judicial activism was interfering with his government’s efforts to fight rising Islamic militancy. He has promised to hold elections by January and return Pakistan to civilian rule.
