Former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif meets party supporters at his home in Lahore yesterday. RIGHT: Supporters clamour for sweets being distributed outside Sharif’s home.
ISLAMABAD: Toppled in a 1999 military coup, jailed and exiled, Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif has made a triumphant election comeback and looks set to form a stable government capable of implementing reforms needed to rescue the fragile economy.
Sharif may not win enough seats to rule on his own but has built up enough momentum to avoid having to form a coalition with his main rivals, former cricketer Imran Khan’s Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
The steel magnate held off a challenge from Khan, who had hoped to break decades of dominance by Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) and the PPP, led by the Bhutto family.
The two parties have formed governments whenever the military, the most powerful institution in the nuclear-armed nation, has allowed civilian rule.
Khan put up a strong fight and he is likely to remain a force in politics, possibly becoming the main opposition figure. The PPP, which led the government for the last five years, has done badly and could come in third place.
Television channels said of the results declared by last evening, Sharif’s PML-N had captured 94 of the 272 contested National Assembly seats. Based on trends, it was likely to get around 130, and should easily be able to make up the required majority of 137 with support from independents and small parties. The PTI has secured 21 seats while the PPP won 19.
The elections, held on Saturday, were marred by a campaign by Islamic fundamentalists to block the voting. Despite pre-poll violence and attacks that killed at least 40 people, voter turnout was a robust 60 percent.
Once it establishes a majority, Sharif’s party would be allocated a majority of 70 other parliamentary seats that are reserved for women and non-Muslim minorities.
Sharif has waited patiently to rule Pakistan again. As the main opposition leader, he avoided undermining the PPP when it was in trouble, and analysts describe him as more cautious than when he was prime minister twice in the 1990s.
“Seemingly a genuinely changed man from his troubling stints as prime minister in the 90s, Sharif now appears to have both a genuine mandate as well as a grasp of the direction Pakistan needs to be steered in,” said political analyst Cyril Almeida. In one sense, the polls were a democratic landmark, marking the first time one elected government was to replace another in a country vulnerable to military takeovers.
But Saturday’s vote failed to realise the hopes of many that the hold of patronage-based parties would end after years of misrule and corruption.
Sharif, 63, is almost certain to become prime minister for a third time. The religious conservative has said the army, which has ruled the country for more than half of its turbulent 66-year history, should stay out of politics.
But he will have to work with Pakistan’s generals, who set foreign and security policy and will manage the country’s thorny relationship with the United States as Nato troops withdraw from neighbouring Afghanistan in 2014.
Sharif also believes Pakistan should reconsider its support for the US war on Islamist militancy, which has earned the country billions of dollars in aid.
In the end, cricketing hero Khan did not have the momentum needed to trip up Sharif despite his popularity among urban youths, many of whom were voting for the first time.
They had rallied behind Khan’s calls for an end to graft and a halt to US drone strikes against suspected militants on Pakistani soil, widely seen as a violation of sovereignty.
In a video message, Khan said the election would boost Pakistan’s young democracy, but added his party was collecting evidence of what he said was vote-rigging. “We are now moving towards democracy. I congratulate the nation on the numbers in which they turned out to vote. The youth was with me. That is my victory,” he said.
Flanked by his brother and daughter, Sharif gave a victory speech late yesterday to hundreds of jubilant supporters at PML-N headquarters in Lahore. “We should thank Allah that he has given PML-N another chance to serve you and Pakistan,” he said, after nearly 60 percent of the 86 million electorate voted. AGENCIES
