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Socialist Resistance : SR48 - October 2007
InternationalPAKISTAN – NO EASY TIME FOR DICTATORSHIP
The current political situation in Pakistan is extremely volatile in the run up to the General Election scheduled for October 6. Parliamentary elections will then probably take place in November. On September 28, the Electoral Commission agreed that General Pervez Musharraf could stand again as President, despite continuing to be head of the army. Several legal challenges to Musharraf ’s position – which came from the main opposition parties as well as other opponents – had been thrown out by the Supreme Court the previous day. But by no means everything is going the General’s way as hundreds of protestors throng the streets in Islamabad and Lahore. Members of the legal profession are playing a central role in these mobilisations against the dictatorship. The Lahore bar association called for an immediate end to the military dictatorship at a seminar on August 31. All of this followed a battle over the position of the Supreme Court Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, who Musharraf suspended in March and who was reinstated after huge mobilisations in July. On September 10, former Prime Minister and Muslim League leader Navaz Sharif managed to break his seven year exile for only a few short hours. He returned to Islamabad on a direct flight from Britain and intended to process in triumph to his home city of Lahore. Sharif had been deposed by Musharraf ’s coup eight years ago Musharraf ’s men were waiting for him and after a tense standoff while he was still on the plane; he disembarked, was arrested and was summarily deported back to Saudi Arabia. This action was in defiance of a ruling from the Supreme Court in July that Sharif was free to return. Indian activist Praful Bidwai noted in an article in The News International on September 17 that Sharif has become more popular of late because he has “tried to relate to the popular mood and taken a strong position against another term for President Musharraf, whether in or out of uniform”. He also notes that this stance from Sharif is in strong contrast to that of the other exiled opposition leader – Benazir Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). Musharraf and Bhutto held discussions in Dubai in July and Bhutto seems all too ready to do a deal. She is not planning to return to Pakistan until October 15 – i.e. after the Presidential election. “Clearly the US wants to supervise a power-sharing arrangement between Musharraf and Bhutto”, Bidwai points out. That this approach, like so much else of US foreign policy, is a completely bi-partisan approach is made clear by Bhutto’s recent visit to Congress where she was feted by the Democrats. Meanwhile I have just heard that Labour Party Pakistan General Secretary Farooq Tariq was released on bail yesterday evening, although nine other comrades remain in prison for technical reasons. It is expected they will be released tomorrow. Tariq, who has been arrested three times in the last three months has been a persistent thorn in the side of the regime. He was freed from jail after a major international campaign in June after being in prison for fifteen days. It is certainly possible that further solidarity with the movement against the military dictatorship will be necessary over the months and weeks ahead For further information see http://www.laborpakistan.org/ http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?rubrique56&var_recherche=pakistan
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Susan Moore