Musharraf faces weak challengers

BY JAMES RUPERT
Published: November 26, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif returned to Pakistan yesterday, vowing to bring down President Pervez Musharraf, who ousted Sharif in a coup and exiled him for nearly eight years. But even as Sharif's arrival broadens the ranks of Musharraf's civilian enemies, the fight for power here is looking increasingly like a battle of political weaklings.

Sharif flew from Saudi Arabia to the city of Lahore after Saudi Arabia pressed Gen. Musharraf to let him back for elections in January, Pakistani officials and foreign diplomats said. His arrival means that nearly all of Pakistan's main political leaders are on hand to challenge Musharraf over his effort to stay in power by declaring himself an elected civilian president.

But Sharif, fellow former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and other civilian politicians are so divided, and so tainted within Pakistan's corrupt political atmosphere, that analysts say it's not clear they can defeat even a deeply unpopular and isolated Musharraf, who retains the loyalty of the army.

In a sign of those divisions, the anti-Musharraf parties argued this weekend whether to boycott the Jan. 8 elections over Musharraf's politically repressive three-week-old emergency rule. Several parties allied to Sharif decided to spurn the vote, but his party and Bhutto's rushed to nominate candidates for parliament while declaring they might join the boycott later.

Sharif enjoyed a moment of triumph, returning only 11 weeks after Musharraf's security men aborted his previous attempt by bundling him onto a plane back to Saudi Arabia. As thousands of his jubilant loyalists thronged the Lahore airport to welcome him, Sharif called the BBC from his taxiing airliner to declare, "I am here to ... make my own efforts to rid the country of dictatorship."

After Musharraf allowed Bhutto to return from exile last month, the Saudi royal family objected to playing jailer to Sharif, with whom they have had good relations, diplomats said. Musharraf resisted Sharif's return because of their personal feud rooted in Musharraf's 1999 coup, analysts said, and also because Musharraf's patchwork political party includes many one-time Sharif clients who might renew their fealty to their old patron.

Sharif's return accentuates the critical role to be played by Bhutto. Her Pakistan People's Party remains the most potent machine in a political system whose leaders largely inspire skepticism and apathy among Pakistanis. Both Sharif and Musharraf have openly sought her help in the coming political battle, but all three figures mistrust each other.

While Bhutto speaks of possibly joining a boycott of the vote, analysts said her party's rush to register candidates is the clearer sign of her leaning. "Benazir's decision to participate in the elections now leaves no choice for other opposition parties. They all must now participate," analyst Nasim Zehra wrote Saturday in a Pakistani daily, The News.

While the November protests against Musharraf have been large and loud, they have proved unable to threaten him. "With the Pakistani bazaar and Karachi consistently refusing to shut down against Gen. Musharraf, no popular movement can take off against him," according to Najam Sethi, one of the country's foremost political analysts.

Sethi and other analysts say Pakistan's political parties are stagnant and weakened by Pakistanis' disgust at chronic corruption and growing gaps between rich and poor. Pakistanis' political hero this year is no politician at all, but the uncharismatic and dour Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, whom Musharraf suspended the constitution this month to dismiss.

In June, 51 percent of Pakistanis polled on behalf of the Washington-based International Republican Institute said they would consider backing Chaudhry if he formed a party to contest elections.