With emergency having been lifted over the weekend, all attention is now focussed on the January 8 election. The Election Commission of Pakistan announced that after scrutiny of nomination papers, a total of 7,335 candidates are in the fray for 292 National Assembly seats and 577 general seats of the four provincial assemblies (The News, December 18). Meanwhile, talk of PPP-PML-N seat adjustment is still in the air, but The News said on

Friday that it is likely to be a limited exercise: “Both sides value a joint strategy in certain high-profile constituencies, for example, where PML-Q President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, its de facto prime ministerial candidate Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi and Sheikh Rashid Ahmed are contesting. But a serious problem faced by the PML-N and the PPP was what to do with their nominees, who had been given tickets for standing with them in hard times. They do not want to annoy such ticket holders.”

In an editorial on Sunday, The Daily Times noted: before lifting the emergency on December 15 (Saturday) President Pervez Musharraf — now civilian but armed with the provisions of the emergency he imposed on November 3 — has promulgated ordinances to protect the changes he has brought about in the judiciary. The set of ordinances amending the Constitution makes sure that the lifting of the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) that he had imposed together with emergency does not automatically restore the dismissed judges.” So, with emergency gone: “The quarrel has shifted from people-versus-Musharraf to a more complicated popular self-reprimand. The press is writing opinion against the political parties who have succumbed to the seduction of elections. The lawyers are rebuking their fellow-lawyers for not boycotting the courts and for joining the post-PCO judiciary.”

... contd.