PPP ready for elections under Musharraf: Benazir

[Awesome]

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http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...5-1-2007_pg1_1

* Former PM warns Opp will resign if Musharraf tries re-election by present assemblies
* Hopes Nawaz Sharif allows PML-N to fight elections

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto has said her Pakistan People’s Party is ready to participate in general elections under President Gen Pervez Musharraf, but warned that all opposition parties would unite and quit parliament if Gen Musharraf tried to get re-elected president from the present assemblies.

In an interview with Geo television, the PPP chairperson said the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) had participated in the 2002 elections under Gen Musharraf and hoped it would do the same at the next polls.

She said Nawaz Sharif had not yet decided whether to participate.

Bhutto said her party sent proposals to the Elections Commission (EC) for free and fair elections but the EC had not responded yet, which weakened her expectations of independent elections. She said her recent meeting with PML President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain in Dubai was a coincidence and Imran Khan had witnessed this meeting.

“There was nothing clandestine between me and Chaudhry Shujaat. We just had a social conversation and Imran Khan is a witness to this meeting,� she said.

� summons Fahim to Dubai

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chairwoman and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto on Thursday summoned her deputy Makhdoom Amin Fahim to Dubai by the first available flight, Daily Times has learnt. “Yes, she has called him to Dubai and he is expected to leave tonight,� PPP parliamentary secretary Izhar Amrohvi confirmed on Thursday. “I spoke with Makhdoom sahib and he told me that he would be going to Dubai.� “It is an important meeting and matters related to the PPPP’s future political strategy will be discussed,� PPPP sources said on condition of anonymity. The sources said the former prime minister would also possibly discuss with her second-in-command an invitation to attend the all parties conference being organised by PML-N chief and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. The sources said Benazir would also possibly discuss the party’s election plan, her return and other election-related matters including the appointment of a caretaker government. zulfiqar ghuman

The reelection of Musharraf may not be fair, but it's legal and breaks no law.

What kind of deal are they working out? PPPP comes to power without Benazir? I wouldn't mind that. But if Benazir comes in! I have serious issues with that.

But then the argument going about these days is that, would you rather see a stronger Benazir or a stronger Fazlur-Rehman? Even if Benazir doesn't become Prime Minister, she should face the the law on corruption charges. I think as per the law she can contest the elections but can't be nominated as Prime Minister since she has served her two terms.

[Lahori paa jee]

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...5-1-2007_pg1_1

The reelection of Musharraf may not be fair, but it's legal and breaks no law.

What kind of deal are they working out? PPPP comes to power without Benazir? I wouldn't mind that. But if Benazir comes in! I have serious issues with that.

But then the argument going about these days is that, would you rather see a stronger Benazir or a stronger Fazlur-Rehman? Even if Benazir doesn't become Prime Minister, she should face the the law on corruption charges. I think as per the law she can contest the elections but can't be nominated as Prime Minister since she has served her two terms.

This is really funny. Benazir is corrupt and so is the majority of PPP. How clean do you think Faisal Saleh Hayat, Naurez Shakur, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, Shahnaz Sheikh and others are. Yet they have held the ministries since 2002.

Mush is not bothered if one is corrupt or not. He only wants to prolong his rule and can deal with anyone no matter how corrupt.

[Awesome]

This is really funny. Benazir is corrupt and so is the majority of PPP. How clean do you think Faisal Saleh Hayat, Naurez Shakur, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, Shahnaz Sheikh and others are. Yet they have held the ministries since 2002.

Mush is not bothered if one is corrupt or not. He only wants to prolong his rule and can deal with anyone no matter how corrupt.

What should he do alternatively?

[Lahori paa jee]

What should he do alternatively?

Get a new breed of politicians. Reject all this old bast@rds and rid us of the looting and corruption they have been doing for the last so many years.

You will remember the PSM privatization scandal (which will haunt Mush for as long as he is in office). That scandal was due to Awais Leghari. He went ahead with the privatization during the time that he was made caretaker. A care taker has not the right to make such a big decision. Result was huge scandal and corruption charges. One of his aides included Zahid Hamid (Brother of former governer punjab Shahid Hamid who is a friend of Farooq Leghari).

Mush should shun all of them. The same circle of chamchas who brought down NS government twice are now gathered around Mush and Shaukat Aziz. Like Mushahid Hussain, Nelofer Bakhtiayar, Muhammad Ali Durrani etc

[Lahori paa jee]

The choice before Bibi


By Ayaz Amir

THIS will be the mother of all elections, says the general-president. For once let us take him at his word. Indeed, for once he is right. For this promises to be a seminal affair: determining for a long time to come whether genuine freedom can prevail in Pakistan or whether the exercise of democracy is beyond us and we are destined to live under tinpot authoritarianism.

The bugles have sounded. Could not they be heard as the old year was passing and the new one coming in? The battle lines are drawn. On one side our past — some shining moments in it but for the most part the stuff of heartache — on the other, the future, calling upon us to seize it.

What do we — the elder citizens of Pakistan, so to speak — want to leave behind us? A future which is an extension of the past and hence no future or, God willing, a break with the past? That, and not someone’s skin or uniform, will be the issue in these elections. If they are held, that is, and nerves hold when crunch time comes.

It is not that we are insensitive to the fears and insecurities of those riding the tiger. We care deeply and we don’t want anyone to be devoured by the tiger. It is just that the larger good is more important.

But pity the nation whose champions of democracy are little better than its destroyers. The destroyers have their priorities clear. Why are the champions so confused about theirs?

What does Benazir Bhutto and her party hope to gain by collaborating with the present order, especially when it is creaking at the joints, its inherent weaknesses more and more exposed with every passing day?

When a vetted audience of loyal government supporters in Khanewal, bused in by nazims and naib nazims, can shout “onions, onions” (referring to the price of onions, by now the most telling symbol of national inflation), when a 21-year-old student from Karachi stands up in the Convention Centre, Islamabad, and amidst wild clapping (and remember this too was a vetted audience) asks the president, “General, you are the guardian of the nation’s frontiers, who showed you the path to the presidency?” then are not these signs from heaven that this arrangement is close to the end of its road?

Young Adnan Kakakhel was brilliant. The video of his performance, captured secretly by phone camera, is circulating across the country. The function of course was compered by friend Mushahid Hussain, once constant joke-cracking courtier at Nawaz Sharif’s darbar, now putting his shoulder to the national interest under the Musharraf banner.

To give him his due, nothing shakes his cool. Whenever I meet him, and I did so at the Marriot in Islamabad last week (where I had gone to attend one of those obscene ‘power’ weddings now very much the norm in the Islamic Republic) he was his usual hearty self.

Lesser souls would not be able to carry off the embarrassment of being secretary-general of the Q League, Gen Musharraf’s instrument for keeping the political field in line. Mushahid, more power to his elbow, does so with aplomb.

To collaborate with such an order at such a time, when the autumn of the patriarch is already over and deep winter is about to set in, no matter if the Yanks are urging and pushing the PPP in that direction, is it not the height of folly?

The great legacy of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto — already much dented and tarnished by Benazir’s numerous twists over the years — finally sacrificed at the altar of a cheap bargain. Is reprieve or relief in the Swiss or Spanish cases worth the ignominy of such a wretched transaction?

And for what? For crumbs from the table of power, for the privilege of collaborating with the present order, which means serving it, like the Q League is doing, like the MQM is doing, and like the holy fathers of the MMA have done so brilliantly.

The first slightly left-of-centre anti-establishment party to come to power in Pakistan, or in that Pakistan which remained after the birth of Bangladesh, and braving adversity for years coming to such a sorry end: supping with the devil and stepping over that line in the sand dividing honour from lasting dishonour. A crying shame, as even PPP diehards will reluctantly admit.

Abida Hussain (ex-minister, ambassador, etc) who has just joined the PPP was telling me on the telephone the other day (yes, we are friends again) that BB mustn’t sell herself short. Why should she sell herself at all, long or short?

For if she does, there will be no room for excuses. The deed will have been done. As Marx warned, “It is not enough to say, as the French do, that their nation was taken unawares. A nation and a woman are not forgiven the unguarded hour in which the first adventurer that came along could violate them.”

Do I hear whispers from the shadows to the effect that honour is for fools? Zulfikar Ali Bhutto did not think so when he went to the gallows, his head unbowed.

If his legacy remains, it is not, principally, because of any Bolshevik or revolutionary achievement when in power, but for the manner he faced death, defiant to the last.

The name of his hangman, Gen Zia, is mud. Bhutto’s name lives on.

Saddam Hussein of brave Tikrit did not think so when he went to the gallows, his many sins washed away by his calmness and courage in the face of death.

If he had cringed or even slightly faltered that would have been the end of his story. But he is already a hero for his people, the Sunni half, or near half, of Iraq.

Maybe the Americans wanted it this way, the flames of sectarian conflict rising higher. There is a witches’ brew cooking in Iraq and every day something fresh is added to it. The Yanks are paying the price of their folly but that is beside the point. Two hundred years from now, Saddam’s cruelty and mistakes will be forgotten. The legend of his bravery will survive.

No, the Pakistani nation is at a turning on the road and which path it takes will have a profound impact on its future. Authoritarianism or the people’s will? That alone will be the question in the mother of all elections. Faced with an issue of like importance in 1971, the people and leadership of what was then West Pakistan abdicated historical responsibility and the result was the break-up of Pakistan. We cannot make a habit of courting disaster. One tryst with disaster in ‘71 should be enough.

Remember, August 14, 2007, will be Pakistan’s 60th birthday. Not able to decide in six decades of existence which path to take: can any fate be more cruel than this? “Is it true, then,” asks Hugo in ‘Les Miserables’, “the soul may be cured, but not destiny? What a frightful thing! An incurable destiny.”

Not just the PPP, all the opposition parties bear a heavy responsibility. They must prepare for elections but not surrender to temptation or petty advantage. Or fall prey to shortsightedness, condemning Pakistan to hopelessness and despair for a long time to come.

Whether they contest the general elections separately or as part of a loose coalition time will tell. But about one thing they should be clear. On no account should they participate in the farce of electing the president for another term from the present assemblies. History will not forgive them if they become bit players in this comedy.

If the president and his men — ultra-loyalists like the Punjab chief minister, Pervaiz Elahi — insist on going ahead with this joke, let the onus for it be on their heads. PPP, PML-N and even the holy fathers of the MMA, who must for once be able to rise above the narrow prism of their self-interest, should take this as a cue to walk out of the pantomime of the present assemblies, leaving the president and his men to their own devices. Then let circumstances take what course they will.

[blain2]

I guess like many, Ayyaz Amir did not see Musharraf's rebuttal to Mr. Kakakhel.
Unlike the latter's declamation, the former was cool and composed and responded to all of the claims made by Kakakhel sahib. For those interested, see the following:

Then he talks about "where I had gone to attend one of those obscene ‘power’ weddings now very much the norm in the Islamic Republic".

If he so put off by the obscenity of all this, then why go? The fact of the matter is that like everyone else in Pakistan, Ayyaz Amir has developed a taste for rubbing shoulders with the who's who of Pakistan. He is no different than the elite of the country he so vehemently decries.

[Awesome]

Get a new breed of politicians. Reject all this old bast@rds and rid us of the looting and corruption they have been doing for the last so many years.

Mush should shun all of them. The same circle of chamchas who brought down NS government twice are now gathered around Mush and Shaukat Aziz. Like Mushahid Hussain, Nelofer Bakhtiayar, Muhammad Ali Durrani etc

But how? These are the people who hold political power in Pakistan because of the way you and I vote all the time.

The sad reality is that the biggest vote bank is still under PPPP and who is not ready to shun Benazir Bhutto! If Benazir is corrupt, so is ever form of PML and MQM and MMA. What does that leave you with?

A radical move to disband ALL of them from politics would be crazy and something solid would have to be proven in court. Even Musharraf alone can't do this especially when the public keeps giving their support to their leaders.

So no way man. You can't fire this shot on Musharraf's shoulder. You want a new breed of politicians to come in? Get them elected! That's the publics job no Musharraf's.

[Spring Onion]

The inside reprot is that according to our newspaper sources, PM will be from PPP while BB agrees to elect Musharraf as president

ahhhhhhhhhh democratic norms

[Awesome]

It all depends upon who will be the PM from PPP, Benazir or someone else?

[Spring Onion]

Asim our sources have info that Benazir will be coming back imean she will be allowed to come back so u can well imagine who will be the PM from PPP.
That is the deal now lets see whats if there will be more twists.
After all politcs is family affair.

[Awesome]

BB has never been stopped from coming. I'm expecting a twist. I don't think its going to be as cut n dry as most commentators are making it out to be.

[Spring Onion]

Asim yes indeed but this time she would be allowed with insurance of a PM slot, drwaign back of all the cases against her . u can understand its different to come back after a deal as compare to come back on her own.

[Bull]

BB has never been stopped from coming. I'm expecting a twist. I don't think its going to be as cut n dry as most commentators are making it out to be.

I think she was scared off by the corruption cases filed against her in the court, right?

So if she comes back, can mushraff or GOP pardon her off and save her from the courts? Does the law allow that?

[Bull]

Asim yes indeed but this time she would be allowed with insurance of a PM slot, drwaign back of all the cases against her . u can understand its different to come back after a deal as compare to come back on her own.

Insurance of a PM slot? How can that be guaranteed? She has to stand and win the elections, right? She could easily be defeated too, bcoz almost all member (pakistanis ofcourse) have said that she is corrupt and was good that she is gone.

[Spring Onion]

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Insurance of a PM slot? How can that be guaranteed? .

Bull not for her election. The guarantee is for her nomination as PM after she wins her seat.

She has to stand and win the elections, right? She could easily be defeated too, bcoz almost all member (pakistanis ofcourse) have said that she is corrupt and was good that she is gone.

Bull most members here know that and atleast we wont vote for her but thn it dosnt matter as most of the people from she might contest polls may not have the same opinion and one more important thing is even if common people know about cooruption but if they have party affiliations with BB they will vote for her.

Her party may not grab most seats but she will win easily her own seat that is for sure.
Rest politics is mostly personalities affairs in sub-continent atleast.