Word: sharif
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...NAWAZ SHARIF, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, who joined with Benazir Bhutto, also a former Prime Minister, to call for a possible boycott in support of more open elections...
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif tried - and, as expected, failed - to get past a line of some 300 riot policemen in Islamabad on Thursday. In what may be a pre-election publicity stunt, Sharif had been trying to visit the deposed Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who has been held under house arrest since President Pervez Musharraf instituted emergency rule on November 3. While hundreds of supporters chanted his name, police turned Sharif back at the concrete and barbed wire barricades. Undeterred, he addressed the crowd, saying, "I have come here to express solidarity with the Chief Justice...
...Sharif's astute display of political theatre presages many more to come in the run-up to parliamentary elections slated for January 8. Few in Pakistan expect the poll to be either free or fair: Emergency rule will not be lifted until December 16, leaving candidates little more than three weeks of campaigning; several provincial candidates may have to campaign while under house arrest; and Sharif himself has been barred from running for Prime Minister. Rumors abound of electoral rigging, ballot stuffing and vote-buying. Given the fraught campaigning atmosphere, candidates are struggling to get the public's attention. Highly...
...boycott debate centers around Pakistan's Judiciary. When Musharraf declared emergency rule, he dismissed the Supreme Court and forced both high court and Supreme Court justices to sign an oath of allegiance. Those that refused to sign were placed under house arrest. Sharif maintains that all parties should boycott elections unless the judiciary sacked by Musharraf is reinstated; Bhutto simply demands a restoration of the constitution and a lifting of emergency rule, saying the reinstatement of the judiciary should be left to the new parliament. Bhutto, like Musharraf, has a vested interest in a more compliant judiciary: Chief Justice Chaudhry...
...Sharif, who has also been charged with corruption, was exempted from Musharraf's amnesty offer, so he has nothing to lose by supporting Chaudhry's reinstatement. Musharraf had earlier attempted to oust Chaudhry in March, but was forced to back down in the face of nationwide protests. Since then, the independent-minded judge has been at the forefront of Pakistan's only genuine grassroots political movement in the past few decades. Its demand for the rule of law and an independent judiciary transcends party lines, and if Sharif can tap the Chief Justice's movement, his party stands a better...