Pakistan’s Bhutto to participate in elections
Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Friday launched her party’s manifesto for elections in January 8, but reiterated that she was taking part in the polls under protest.Bhutto held up a copy of the document for television cameras as she said that her party would not boycott the elections following President Pervez Musharraf’s announcement that he would lift emergency rule on December 16.
‘We are taking part in elections under protest, we are not giving them any legitimacy. But if we do not participate we leave the field for others,’ Bhutto told reporters in Islamabad.
‘Our policy is based on five ‘E’s — employment, education, energy, environment and equality,’ the former premier added.
Bhutto said that she could ‘review our decision’ on participating in the election if she could agree a common agenda with fellow former premier Nawaz Sharif and other parties.
‘But it has to be a joint opposition, it must be a joint opposition,’ she said.
Sharif said late Thursday that an opposition alliance featuring his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz Party would boycott the elections, the first for nearly six years, saying that they would not be free or fair.
Bhutto, who has previously voiced fears that the vote will be rigged, said that the electoral process ‘is not just’ and said that Musharraf’s regime had not taken any action on her complaints.
It can easily be argued that a rigged election is better then no election at all, and hopefully some steps can be taken to deal with some of those issues. If there is a bright lining to the Pakistan situation though, it is that for all Musharraf’s crackdown, he hasn’t really gotten violent and their is still a strong opposition movement that hasn’t been driven underground. A truly nasty authoritarian regime would have silenced any such protests by now.
That is not to say everything is great in Pakistan right now, or that I am unconcerned with the steps Musharraf has taken. Clearly their is reason to be greatly concerned, but there is also some reasons to hope that that nation can take a step back from the abyss.
