Word: sharif
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Like the teenager who thought he was too cool to go to the party until he realized he was the only one left out, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced Sunday that his Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) Party would contest parliamentary elections slated for January 8. In fact, like that metaphorical teenager, he may also have realized that he would have to participate in order to preserve his own cool clique...
...Sharif, who had long held that the elections are illegitimate and should be boycotted, defended his decision on Dawn News television today, saying that after failing to convince fellow opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's party and a leading religious party to join him, the boycott would be ineffectual. "If any boycott is to take place it must be unanimous, any partial boycott would be disastrous for the opposition," he said...
That may be the case for the opposition as a whole. But it is also true for the part of the oppostion he leads. Sharif, who has been disqualified from running himself due to criminal charges related to Musharraf's 1999 coup, risked the defection of key members of his party if he did not allow it to join the elections. "The [party] had a lot of heavyweights that stood a good chance of winning key seats if they contested," says Ayesha Tammy Haq, a prominent political talk show host. "If Sharif called for a boycott, they would have defected...
...Sharif first suggested that he would boycott the elections nearly two weeks ago, the day President Pervez Musharraf was sworn in for his second term as President. It was a protest against Musharraf's state of emergency, which Sharif said would limit campaigning and make the elections unfair. Even though Musharraf announced on the same day that the emergency would be lifted on December 16, Sharif maintained that without the restoration of the Supreme Court, which the President dismissed when he suspended the constitution and declared the state of emergency, elections would legitimize Musharraf's actions...
...While boycotting the elections is still an option for Bhutto, she looks set to participate, knowing that Sharif will have no choice but to follow her lead - boycotting may give him the moral high ground, but his party would lose power. And that explains today's theatrics in front of the Chief Justice's house. Bhutto made a similar move last week. Both candidates will wave the boycott card until the very last minute, in a game of political poker that will end on December 15, the deadline for candidates to enter the race. Still, it's Musharraf who holds...