[NYTr] Top Rival Sharif Calls for Musharraf to Step Down Immediately

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The New York Times - Dec 31, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/world/asia/31cnd-pakistan.html


Top Rival Calls for Musharraf to Step Down Immediately

By JANE PERLEZ

LAHORE, Pakistan — The most experienced opposition politician in
Pakistan, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, lashed out at President
Pervez Musharraf on Monday, calling for his immediate resignation and
the formation of a government of national consensus.

“He is a one-man calamity and the source of all the problems,” Mr.
Sharif said at a news conference here in the headquarters of his
faction of the Pakistan Muslim League. “The country is burning.”

The attack, the most stinging public rebuke of the president from Mr.
Sharif since his return from exile, was delivered amid strong
indications that the government would postpone elections scheduled for
Jan. 8, because of the chaos following the assassination of Benazir
Bhutto, the other leading opposition leader.

While the government will not decide officially until Tuesday,
officials with the Pakistani election commission said the voting would
probably be delayed until the end of January or early February, despite
Washington’s entreaties to hold them as scheduled.

Mr. Sharif said at his party would participate if the parliamentary
elections went ahead on Jan. 8, despite recent threats to stage a
boycott. Both Mr. Sharif’s party and Ms. Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples
Party, now led by her son and husband, believe they can capitalize at
the polls on the deep well of sympathy over the killing and anger
against the government for not doing more to prevent it.

Many opposition figures and Pakistani political commentators have said
that damage to election offices in Sindh Province caused by the
violence that erupted after Ms. Bhutto’s death, the burning of
electoral rolls and the government’s plans to rig the results virtually
guaranteed that the election would be deeply flawed if it were held on
Jan. 8.

Mr. Sharif suggested that his party would participate only because it
had little choice but to follow the decision of Ms. Bhutto’s party on
Sunday to contest the elections.

Opposition politicians said it was in the government’s interest to
delay the elections so that it could try to recoup support that it lost
after the assassination of Ms. Bhutto. Many Pakistanis have said they
blame the Musharraf government for her death because its security
agencies failed to provide proper protection for Ms. Bhutto as she left
a rally at the garrison city of Rawilpindi.

The strong words that Mr. Sharif unleashed against Mr. Musharraf in
Monday’s briefing reflected the poisonous history between the two men.

Like Ms. Bhutto, Mr. Sharif was twice prime minister. He was deposed
during his second term in October 1999 when Mr. Musharraf was head of
the Pakistani Army and staged a coup against him.

Hours before the coup, Mr. Sharif had hoped to oust General Musharraf —
whom Mr. Sharif had personally elevated to the top army post — by
preventing his plane from landing after a trip abroad.

But that gambit failed, and once Mr. Musharraf became president, he
charged Mr. Sharif with attempted murder and corruption, then banished
him to a 10-year exile in Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Sharif returned to Pakistan last month, and since then has taken a
tougher stand against Mr. Musharraf than did Ms. Bhutto, including a
demand that the president restore the judges of the Supreme Court and
High Courts who were fired during the recent six-week emergency rule.

Expanding on Nawaz Sharif’s comments at the news conference here, his
brother, Shahbaz Sharif, also an experienced politician, said he was
confident that the mood against the Musharraf government had turned so
sour that the two main opposition parties would win the election, even
if it was delayed a bit.

Shahbaz Sharif was chief minister of Punjab province, one of the most
powerful jobs in Pakistan, during his brother’s second term.

“The Pakistan People’s Party will win seats, and we will defeat the Q
League hands down,” he said, referring to the Pakistan Muslim League
faction of Mr. Musharraf’s followers. “Even if they try to rig, we will
win. The atmosphere has changed against them. The courage to rig has
diminished.”

He accused the current chief minister of Punjab, Chaudhry Pervaiz
Elahi, of planning to distribute forged ballot papers and to create
“ghost” polling stations in order to swing the election in favor of Mr.
Musharraf’s party.

“Ghost” polling stations are extra polling places that are often
created in Pakistani elections to enhance the vote totals of one side
or another.

The best solution to the current charged political atmosphere,
according to Shahbaz Sharif, would be for Mr. Musharraf to allow a
government of “national consensus” to be formed in consultation with
the opposition parties. This government’s chief task would be to
prepare for elections 45 days to three months after taking office.

The new government could form a neutral and powerful election
commission to replace the current politically biased one, a move that
was more likely to ensure free and fair elections, he said. “The
election commission is a pawn; it has no legitimacy,” he said.

Such a government would also be in a better position to investigate the
still-uncertain circumstances surrounding the assassination of Ms.
Bhutto, because it would be perceived as being more neutral, he said.

The idea of a consensus government that would hold office until new
elections has gained currency in Pakistan’s news media since the death
of Ms. Bhutto. If steps were not taken to form a consensus government
Shahbaz Sharif said he believed the public anger could spin out of
control.

The fury in the province of Sindh, the home base of the Bhutto family,
was so intense that the possibility was raised that it might split off
as a separate entity. There were strong undercurrents for separation
from the federation of Pakistan in the province of Baluchistan and
North West Frontier Province as well, he said.

“The international community must see that Pakistan can sink into deep
turmoil,” he said. In order to stave off the potential chaos, he said,
Mr. Musharraf had to be pressured to take the right steps, just as he
was persuaded to step down as army chief and to end the six-week
emergency rule imposed last month.

“If Benazir Bhutto’s killing is not investigated fairly and elections
are not free and fair, and if a neutral caretaker government is not put
in place, it can lead us to a crisis beyond anyone’s reach.” 

Copyright 2007 The New York Times