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Sharif ousted before Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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PAKISTAN-ELECTIONS: Nawaz Sharif's Victory Wins Business Approval
ISLAMABAD, Feb 4 (IPS) - Nawaz Sharif's decisive win in general elections in Pakistan has won approval on the Karachi Stock Exchange, but his arch rival Benazir Bhutto, the previous prime minister, is crying foul.
Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) which has been relegated to the opposition in the National Assembly, is claiming the voting on Feb. 3 was rigged. She had challenged the outcome of the 1990 polls also, blaming the PPP's defeat to vote tampering by Sharif's Muslim League (PML-N).
This will be Sharif's second chance at ruling Pakistan. His first term was cut short in 1993 by the then president on charges of corruption. Though he was reinstated by the Supreme Court, he stepped down under pressure from the army which supported the holding of mid-term polls, that Bhutto went on to win.
None of Pakistan's previous three governments has completed its term. This week's election was the country's fourth in the last eight years, and Sharif and Bhutto have been been taking it in turns to head the government here.
Rivalry between the two, who dominate Pakistan's politics, has paralysed Pakistan. Bhutto was sacked last November by President Farooq Leghari, who said her government has pushed the country to the brink of bankruptcy. Foreign exchange reserves have fallen, and the nation's domestic and foreign debt currently exceeds its gross domestic product. The budget deficit has increased despite huge tax hikes last year by the PPP government.
Economic revival was Sharif's one-point agenda for Pakistan during the campaigning. And as election results poured in Tuesday, stocks on the Karachi Stock Exchange rose 10 points in early morning trading. Business analysts said it was a thumbs up sign from the business community.
Sharif is one of Pakistan's biggest businessmen. He belongs to Punjab, the country's most prosperous state, which has voted overwhelmingly for his party. Results from the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) have also gone in his favour, while the previous ruling party seems to be winning mainly in rural Sindh.
The election results have been humiliating for the PPP. Several ministers in the Bhutto cabinet have lost their seats. But the biggest rout has been of the fledgling Tehrik-e-Insaaf (a party seeking justice) launched last year by Imran Khan, a cricket legend-turned- politician who has lost from all the nine seats he contested.
Khan, though according to a supporter in a television interview, was not dispirited. He said the former cricketer was a newcomer in Pakistani politics, and would continue to work to gain the confidence of the electorate.
Voter turnout on Monday, which was expected to be one of the lowest in recent elections, has according to revised estimates been closer to 40 percent of the 56 million eligible to vote, as much as in the last polls in 1993.
Pakistani poll observers and members of the Commonwealth Observers Group have expressed satisfaction that voting was fair and transparent. ''We are satisfied that those who wished to vote were able to vote,'' the group told the press in Islamabad.
With a quarter million troops deployed on election duty, there were only a couple of incidents of clashes between rival groups. One person each was killed in the southern port city of Karachi and Lahore, the capital of Sindh and Punjab respectively.
More than 2,000 candidates were in the fray for the simultaneous elections to the National Assembly and four provincial assemblies. Among the prominent winners are Bhutto's mother Nusrat, who trounced her son Murtaza's widow Ghinwa, leader of a splinter PPP party.
Lebanese-born Ghinwa inherited the leadership of her husband's party after his killing last September during a gun-battle with the police in Karachi. Pre-poll surveys had expected she could be a spoiler for her sister-in-law Bhutto, whose husband, Asif Ali Zardari, she has accused of master-minding Murtaza's killing.
Zardari, a minister in his wife's Cabinet, is now in prison, charged with complicity in the murder. This is his second spell in jail. He was behind bars during Sharif's last term in power, between 1990 and 1993, on various charges of corruption. But he was cleared in all the cases.
The incoming government is going to have its hands full, and will have to deliver on its promises if it hopes to win the confidence of the majority of people here. The below 40 percent voter turnout is widely seen as a barometre of the widespread disillusionment with politicians.
Pakistan has a long history of martial rule. The army returned to the barracks only in 1988 when democracy was restored. But political analysts continue to question the ability of political
parties to act independently of the military establishment, which is known to still call the shots in Pakistan.
Even the new government may not have much choice in the matter. President Leghari set up a Council for Defence and National Security comprising the army top brass, besides the Prime Minister and President last month.
Though Leghari declared the new body would have a purely advisory role and the Parliament and council of ministers would remain supreme, independent jurists said the National Security Council was unconstitutional.
However, most Pakistani politicians have refrained from criticising the move to give a formal role to the army in government. A leader of Sharif's Muslim League said, ''For the first time, the army is party to the politics of Pakistan and will have to take the responsibility (for what goes wrong).'' (End/IPS/an/97)
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Copyright © 1997 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited unless written permission is obtained from IPS-Inter Press Service
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