Adil Najam
Former Prime Minister and PML(N) leader Nawaz Sharif is back in Pakistan.
Reportedly he landed in Lahore to a large reception by his supporters and was escorted to a special bullet proof car that had been brought for him. According to The News:
A special plane carrying the PML-N Chief Nawaz Sharif, his brother Shahbaz Sharif and other family members arrived in Lahore from the holy city of Madina on Sunday evening. The convoys of PML-N workers arrived in Lahore to accord rousing welcome to Sharifs. Large welcome banners and pictures of Sharif brothers have been displayed at several places in Lahore. The special plane Boeing777 carried Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif along with 26 members of their family from the holy city of Madina.
The central and provincial leaders of PML-N, lawyers and members of civil society have arrived to receive Sharifs at Lahore Airport. Nawaz Sharif is expected to first visit Data Darbar in a procession and address a public meeting. Security had been tightened in Lahore especially on the airport ahead of arrival of the PML-N leader. Provincial home department has allowed only hundred party leaders to receive Sharifs at the airport, party sources claimed.
According to sources, bullet-proof cars for Sharifs reached in Lahore last night from Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the home department said that the authorities have decided to give free hand to Nawaz Sharif but he has not been permitted for holding a public meeting and rally.
Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif and other family members will be transported to home from the airport, a home department statement said. However, thousands of PML-N workers succeeded in arriving airport by crossing the barricades put up by police. On this occasion, the workers raised slogans both in favour of Nawaz Sharif and against the government.
Readers would remember from our prior posts that in August the Supreme Court of Pakistan had ruled that he could, in fact, return to Pakistan despite whatever ‘deal’ he had made with Gen. Musharraf at teh time of his original flight to Saudi Arabia. However, when he did return to the country in September, he was unceremoniously and dramatically deported back to Saudi Arabia with theatrics which rivaled his own attempts not to let Gen. Musharraf land in Pakistan many moons ago.
Now it turns out that he has made yet another ‘deal’ with Gen. Musharraf which has enabled his return.
It is not fully clear what the ‘terms’ of this deal are. Nor what the Musharraf-Nawaz Sharif deal mean
s for the earlier Musharraf-Benazir deal that had enabled her return some weeks back. Nor, in fact, is it clear what what his return (and the fact that now both Benazir and Nawaz Sharif are back in Pakistan) will mean for the future of Pakistan’s politics and the (supposed) forthcoming elections.
In despair, one even wonders if it means anything at all? Or is this just one more drama in the string of topi dramas that have come to define our distraught and fractured polity?
AG Qayyum is commenting that NS can’t contest the elections because he is convicted. Constitutionally its the discretion of the CEC to decide that. In other words the case is “sub judice”. Can AG comment on that?
My family lives in Gulberg Lahore, they told me that during the last 4 elections, prior to 1999, the canditates of two major parties went to all the households in turn and they themselves or their representative gave promisory tokens of couple of hundred rupees to each voter who would vote for their party’s candidate. Some times they paid cash (Rs 100) to individuals in return for voting for their candidate.
In some streets in Gulberg where residents had voted for the other party, the winning party’s elected member on taking charge had the paved surface removed on the pretext that it will be modernised but was left unattended for years in order to punish the dwellers voting for other party.
In some parts of Lahore prior to elections Prospective candidates of Noon League had given revolvers to some chosen persons (mostly goonda types), so they could intimidate or frighten anyone who dared to oppose their patrons. This sort of things among other tactics goes on unchecked. Poor people are too frightened, and do as told, when comes to voting.
Is this democracy? None of the major parties have ever held elections to choose a Leader, the leadership is till death and then is passed on within the famlies. Surely there are worthy personalities other than the sitting twice rejected so called leaders, who could have successfuly taken over the reins of their respected party when their leader is ousted or rejected. Take political parties anywhere in the civilised world, they have always changed leaders by election within their party. Conservative party in UK have had many different Leaders during their stint as an opposition party. This is democracy.
The recently ousted Judges of the Supreme Court of Pakistan were themselves sworn under the last PCO, and most were hand picked by the Chief Justice himself during the course of his tenure. Who are they to cry WOLF now that similarly a new team is selected by the President.
My appeal to fellow Pakistanis is to use your head and cast your votes to the right person and don’t waste it.
faraz:
“What I am afraid off that some people who dont like free market economy, dont want to compete and like ghost workforce in big corporation want to transform anti-Musharaf wave against his policies.”
Very simple logic, which does not stand the test of time and history. In fact one of the charges against the previous government was that it was not providing the level-playing field to all the players in the economy. Its well known that every other construction contract during the previous government was given to FWO or NLC without even inviting the tenders. One of the main reasons behind the rise of prices of certain commodities such as cement, sugar, wheat and what not was cartelization, which cannot happen in the condition of open competition. Only the courts could stop such activities but they were rendered “toothless” thanks to Musharraf-Aziz duo.
“Aqil Sajid, it is human nature that people want change and they are tired of Musharaf for same reason.”
Apparently all polls indicate that before March 9 Musharraf’s approval rating was more than 50%, though less than the 70%+ he enjoyed in 2002, still enough to win PML(Q) the next elections. Had he not sacked CJ in his lust for power he might still have been the President in uniform. So its not people’s desire for change that has caused troubles for Musharraf but his own lust for absolute power. If it is assumed that people just want change and also assume that the basic nature of all humans is the same, then Russians should now be tired of Putin, after eight years of his rule, they must be tired of Mubarak and so on and so forth. But they don’t. So such complex phenomenon can’t just be explained with such simple notions.
In his novel “War and Peace” , Leo Tolstoy argued that the history is not shaped by “great men” , it is not Napoleans, Musharraf , Iftikhar Chaudarys of this world who move events, it is the massess , insignificant people , social pressures and several other forces that shape the events in history.
9th of March , 20th July , 3rd November and now 29th of November does not happen in Pakistan because General Pervez Musharraf had issues with CJ Iftikhar Chaudary, or US put pressure on Pervez Musharraf to patch up with BB, or King Abdullah allowed Nawaz Sharif to return to Pakistan.
It all started with 20 or so insignificant persons along with thousands and then hundreds of thousand people starting realizing something unthinkable.
I feel compelled to ask “All Things Pakistan” to highlight the case of missing person again as after the removal of CJ and other judges these people have lost a lot of hope. There are couple of very good documentaries which have been prepared on these people. Second one is here.
http://missinginpakistan.wordpress.com/