Pakistan's parties now prefer polls
By Beena Sarwar
KARACHI - With general elections barely a month away, Pakistan's major
political parties have decided not to boycott the polls and take their chances
in a situation where the media and the judiciary have been hobbled.
Unable to convince Benazir Bhutto of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) to agree
to a boycott, her chief rival Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N)
announced on Sunday that the party has no choice but to participate. "After
failing to get the PPP on board, he does not want the field to remain open
for
[President Pervez] Musharraf's loyalists," said PML-N spokesman Ahsan Iqbal.
However, Sharif and his younger brother Shahbaz, who is known to be the brains
behind the PML-N, will be unable to run. The Election Commission has
disqualified both on the grounds that they were convicted in criminal cases
(after being ousted from power in 1999 by Musharraf, who was then army chief).
Bhutto has said she did not see what purpose boycotting elections would serve,
and announced that her party will participate in the elections "under protest".
The PPP's critics dismiss this as a ploy to get back into power.
Similar charges are leveled at Maulana Fazlur Rehman's faction of the Jamiat
Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) which says that participating in the polls is the only
way to emerge from the current political crisis. A JUI-F leader was reported as
saying that boycotting the elections is against the spirit of the parliamentary
process. "If some parties boycott the elections, but the voters go to the
polling stations in large numbers, how will the boycotters allege that the
elections were rigged," he asked.
The Awami National Party, with its stronghold in the high-stakes North-West
Frontier Province, was also reluctant to leave the field open to its right-wing
rivals.
The argument for the boycott was based on the premise that free and fair
elections are impossible without an independent judiciary and media, and that
the existing setup is prejudiced in favor of Musharraf and his supporters as
the caretaker government does not include any opposition members, and the
Election Commission of Pakistan is not an independent body.
Musharraf required the Supreme Court and High Court judges to take oath under
his provisional constitution order (PCO) of November 3 that imposed a de facto
martial law on the country. For the first time in Pakistan's history, a
majority of these judges refused. Many of the judges remain under house arrest.
Independent television and radio networks, initially banned from broadcasting
in Pakistan, are back on air (except the largest Geo Television), but with
severe constraints and conditions.
"Those who are determined to participate [in the elections] will only
legitimize the present illegitimate system," said political analyst and former
foreign secretary Shamshad Ahmad. "No movement will survive once these
elections are held and accepted by the world community. We might then have
another United States-propped up Hosni Mubarak [of Egypt] in the making."
The All Pakistan Lawyers' Representatives Convention in Lahore on Saturday
declared the December 23 general elections as an "eyewash" and unanimously
decided to boycott them, observing that the polls cannot be fair, free and
impartial under Musharraf, "the so-called caretaker government and the
incomplete Election Commission".
"Civil society" - lawyers, students, human-rights activists and non-government
organizations as well as the smaller political parties - also largely took a
similar position. However, the most important stakeholders in the debate, the
political parties, were divided on the issue. Over 60 are registered with the
Election Commission.
The All-Pakistan Democratic Movement (APDM), one of the two major opposition
alliances, had initially also taken this position, calling for a boycott unless
the judges were restored by December 15. The decision was endorsed by
twice-elected former prime minister Sharif's PML-N, cricketer-turned-politician
Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) or Movement for Justice and the
Jamaat-e-Islami.
Khan burned his bridges by publicly tearing up his nomination papers. "Any
politician who participates in these fraudulent elections held under an
unconstitutional and illegal PCO will be strengthening a dictator," he
declared.
Since the PTI is not a mass-based party - it had only one seat in the National
Assembly, held by Khan himself - this will not have too much impact, say
analysts. But for Sharif, the stakes are higher. He has been forced to
reconsider his stance in order not to leave the field open to another
twice-elected former prime minister Bhutto, now a nominal ally in the fight
against military rule in Pakistan.
The PPP is part of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy, another
opposition coalition, but she and Sharif are co-signatories to a Charter of
Democracy aimed at pushing the military out of politics.
With both major parties now in the running, even rigged elections will only
affect a couple of dozen seats, say analysts. In any case, the participation of
these political forces will be a severe blow to the "king's party", Pakistan
Muslim League-Q, which has been ruling the roost along with Musharraf for the
past five years. Also affected will be the "jihadis", the right-wing religious
parties who joined hands as the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal and made significant
electoral inroads when Sharif and Bhutto were barred from contesting the 2002
elections.
Those who were against the boycott have been arguing that political
participation is the only way to undo the Musharraf-imposed constitutional
aberrations, and that boycotting the elections does not address the issue of
how the judges are to be reinstated. High Court advocate Faisal Siddiqi
explains, "The judges cannot be restored without participating in the election.
The constitutional and politically realistic option of restoration is through
the new assembly."
The PPP has taken a similar position. On Saturday, PPP senator Safdar Abbasi
told a press conference that only Parliament can reinstate the deposed judges.
To the question whether the PPP would reinstate them if voted to power, he
said, "Let us see how many seats we get." Constitutional amendments require a
two-thirds majority in Parliament.
The popular president of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) Aitzaz Ahsan,
himself a PPP candidate, under house arrest since the proclamation of
emergency, sent a letter to lawyers on December 5 proposing a strategy in case
all major parties decided to contest the elections, in order to "keep the issue
of the 'deposed' judges alive".
He suggested that the SCBA "while continuing to deny validity to this election,
prescribes its own oath to be taken and signed by all candidates". The oath
will require each deponent to swear that they will take the necessary moves to
ensure the restoration of the "ousted" judges.
Prominent human-rights lawyer Asma Jahangir, chairwoman of the independent
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), speaking with Inter Press Service
shortly before the APDM announced its decision on Sunday, said the HRCP had
reached a middle-ground position after discussing the issue with its members
and with several political parties. "We will welcome it if the political
parties boycott the elections, but we should convince them to do so jointly. If
they don't, we are not going to condemn them."
While urging the opposition parties to participate in the election process,
Musharraf has announced that he will lift the emergency on December 15 - a day
ahead of the original date announced December 16 - an inauspicious date,
commemorating the anniversary of the Pakistani army's defeat in Bangladesh in
1971.
Some analysts speculate that had the political parties overwhelmingly boycotted
the polls, Musharraf would have responded by extending the emergency.
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