By Jo Johnson
Published: June 17 2007 22:11 | Last updated: June 17 2007 22:11
Benazir Bhutto claims to have secured a "verbal" agreement from her principal rival for the prime ministership of
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mrs Bhutto said that she and Nawaz Sharif, the exiled leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (N), had struck the bargain so that they could present a common front in their battle to reassert civilian control over the army.
Any such arrangement would go far beyond the published terms of the Charter of Democracy – a 36-point common programme to "save the motherland from the clutches of military dictatorship" – that Mrs Bhutto, who heads the Pakistan People's party, and Mr Sharif signed in May 2006.
"Both of us are committed to reforming the military establishment. So I hope that we will have a consensus within the parliament on the reforms that we are going to bring and that the military would not be able to play one of us off against the other," Mrs Bhutto said.
"Mr Nawaz Sharif and I agree. Mr Nawaz says, 'You should be the prime minister for the first five-year term', and after that five-year term he wants to run. So I hope that we can move forward. That's a verbal discussion between us but that is what he has said to me."
But Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, the secretary-general of the PML (N), denied there was any such offer from Mr Sharif. The claim and counter-claim illustrate the tensions between opposition groups as they jockey for position in a fast-changing political scene.
"The people will decide in fair elections who forms the government," he said. "If she forms the government, Mr Sharif has said we will respect her mandate, or that of anyone else elected by the people. This is a new development in Pakistani politics."
For either to become prime minister would require General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's embattled president, to reverse his position that neither of the former prime ministers will be allowed back into the country and to rescind a law barring them from a third term.
Gen Musharraf is under
Mrs Bhutto, who has served as prime minister twice, between 1988 and 1990 and 1993 and 1996, acknowledged that the PPP had been discussing a possible deal with Gen Musharraf that would enable him to continue as president, provided he agreed to quit as army chief.
"We've had discussions but they have not moved forward," she said. "We've left all options open. We may abstain or we may resign. To say that we've decided not to vote against him would be wrong."
A poll published in April by the Washington-based International Republican Institute showed the PPP to be the most popular party, with support from 25.7 per cent of sampled voters, an increase of nearly four points on the IRI's September 2006 poll.
Benazir Bhutto prepares for encore
By Jo Johnson
Published: June 17 2007 22:11 | Last updated: June 17 2007 22:11
Nearly two decades after she became the first elected female prime minister in the Islamic world at the age of 35, Benazir Bhutto is preparing for an encore. Within the next few months, as
In an interview with the Financial Times, she warned the
"Very little of the $10bn in US aid has trickled down to the people," she says. "As people get poorer and as unemployed figures go higher, they say that the reason we're suffering is because we don't have representative government, because the
Her return, if permitted by the authorities, will shake
The Bhutto name may have been tarnished by allegations of corruption and compromises with the military, but it remains powerful, steeped in blood and history. Mrs Bhutto's father, the populist prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was executed by General Zia in 1979. Her two brothers were murdered. She underwent long and gruelling incarcerations.
Mrs Bhutto, head of the Pakistan People's party – the largest centrist party in the country – senses that the pendulum of Pakistani civilian-military relations is swinging in her favour. General Pervez Musharraf has been weakened by outrage over his suspension of the chief justice, tolerance of riots in
With his popularity ebbing and hers once again soaring, Gen Musharraff's plan to have himself re-elected looks untenable. With even the
Mrs Bhutto has signed a 36-point programme with Nawaz Sharif, leader of the rival Pakistan Muslim League (N), setting out their demands for the holding of fair elections. However, analysts still expect her to try to strike a deal with the general.
Delicate discussions have been under way for several months, but "have not moved forward", she says, noting that he has met only one of the 36 demands, relating to transparent ballot boxes.
The big stumbling block is the PPP's insistence that Gen Musharraf step out of the uniform from which his authority flows.
But it is not the only point of difference. Mrs Bhutto wants Gen Musharraf to drop the corruption charges, brought by Mr Sharif in the 1990s, that have kept her in exile. She also needs him to scrap the two-term limit he imposed on the office of prime minister and to give credible guarantees that parliamentary elections will be fair.
She says she is "troubled" that the Election Commission has refused to give the PPP an electronic list of voters and that the number of voters has fallen to 50m from 70m in 2002, even as Pakistan's population has grown.
"We suspect that 20m votes, which are opposition votes, are not there," she says. "The entire election is rigged if 20m votes are missing, one-third of the vote in elections that are won by 1-2 per cent. My concern is that Gen Musharraf's regime is not heading towards fair elections.
"The international community can't risk the backlash if he moves in a direction that does not allow free and fair elections."
Her critics say her deal-making reflects the perennial weakness of Pakistan's opposition parties, which have allowed military rulers to play one off against another and let themselves be co-opted into governments that are little more than fronts for the army.
Non-partisan analysts say that Mrs Bhutto's perceived deal-making and adoption of a less aggressive stance towards Gen Musharraf than rival politicians, risks undermining the Alliance for the Restoration for Democracy, the umbrella group that has, at least for the moment, managed to forge a common front out of bickering opposition parties.
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