In a chilling message to the people of Pakistan and to the rest of the world, former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif has hinted that President Musharraf could be hanged in the near future. Addressing a mass rally at the stroke of dawn on saturday at the end of a cross-country motorcade protest demanding the reinstatement of chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhury and other judges.
Nawaz Sharif’s daring call for Musharraf to be executed shows how much foothold he has gained since returning to mainstream Pakistani politics from his exile in Saudi Arabia. This also hints at the decline of Musharraf’s power and popularity. Sharif’s speech was particularly fiery and there was a clear indication that the man who was ousted by President Musharraf in 1999 is gearing up for a serious political revenge against his arch rival. Sharif’s rise in popularity since his return coinciding with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto has made Musharraf very uncomfortable politically and now there is a classic three-party tangle for the control of power in Islamabad. The problem is with no concrete political solution in Pakistan, there is a lingering fear that the nuclear-armed Islamic country could be taken over by radical Islamists leading to a complete security disaster for the region.
With lawyers increasing their protest against Musharraf and Asif Ali Zardari, whose PPP is heading a coalition government in Islamabad, Nawaz Sharif has succeded in gaining support of powerful democratic institutional associations. With the PPP and Sharif’s PML(N)failing to agree on several issues, Nawaz Sharif has made it his agenda to humiliate both Musharraf and Asif Ali Zardari’s PPP in order to restore himself as the sole power figure in Pakistani politics and at the moment he is heading in the right direction.
It remains to be seen where this highly unstable South Asian country heads but it cannot be denied that the once forgotten Pakistani political figure has come back to haunt his arch rival in his quest to wrestle back the prize he lost nine years ago in a bloodless coup.
Via: Reuters
