Election’s contests

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.”

Troika, reformed

In the December issue of Newsline, Zahid Hussain considers what the future could hold for Pakistan’s “chain-smoking” 14th chief of army staff,

General Ashfaq Kayani: “Analysts maintain that the army would continue to back him as a bridge between the armed forces and the future civilian government. But power could gravitate more towards General Kayani in the event of any political instability. The change of guard also signals the return of the troika rule that dominated the country’s politics in the 1990s. The political role of the military in the country’s power structure has already been formalised by Musharraf through the formation of the National Security Council. The Council includes the chiefs of the three services: the army, the navy and the air force. This will make General Kayani an important member of the power structure.”

... contd.