Sharif returns to Pakistan to fight another day

Nov 25, 2007, 22:35 GMT

Supporters of Nawaz Sharif (C) the former Prime Minister and leader of opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) gather around him as he arrives at Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore, Pakistan, 25 November 2007. EPA/RAHAT DAR

Lahore, Pakistan - Police thrashed with canes, bottles flew in the air amid raucous jubilation and a former prime minister was pinballed roughly around Lahore airport arrivals by a frenzied throng.

Nawaz Sharif had finally ended seven years of foreign exile and on Sunday re-entered the rough and tumble world of Pakistan's politics with a bump.

His rousing pledges to end dictatorship and restore democracy in a country still ruled by the man who ousted him in 1999, General Pervez Musharraf, were largely lost in the melee. Instead, the hundreds of people who came to greet their idol expressed simple hopes that he might simply steer things a little more their way.

'I'm just happy that he's coming back, he'll give me a new taxi,' enthused Zaidi Kazimi, 50, a resident of Rawalpindi who claimed to be the country's first female yellow taxi driver under a transport initiative by the ex-premier during the 1990s.

She then turns back to a circle of friends chanting 'This regime in army boots, We won't accept it,' leaving it to other members of Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) to take up the baton in his defence.

After all, Sharif, 57, has been charged with extensive corruption during his two-terms in the 1990s and spent so long in exile in Saudi Arabia and Britain that many think he is too far behind the times.

'He has matured, he can now run the country much better than before,' believes Shahid Hussein, a 32-year-old bank worker, who spent the hours before Sharif's arrival parading with a poster of him at the airport perimeter.

Despite far-reaching powers available to authorities under the emergency rule imposed this month by Musharraf, a clamouring mass of PML-N supporters then broke through police and barbed wire cordons and converged on the terminal to greet their leader.

But staging a tumultuous homecoming - and not being targeted for assassination like ex-premier and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was last month when she ended her own long exile - is only the first of many challenges ahead for Sharif.

He is technically liable on charges of corruption, treason and hijacking, stemming from his orders to divert a fuel-starved plane carrying Musharraf before he was deposed.

And his brother, Shahbaz, who accompanied him home, still faces charges of 'extra-judicial killing' dating to his earlier days as Punjab chief minister.

The general reduced the ousted premier's life sentence for the crimes to a 10-year exile in Saudi Arabia at Riyadh's suggestion.

Seven years later this apparent breach of agreement drew government threats to revive the sentence before his abortive return to Pakistan on September 10. Sharif was arrested and promptly deported to the Gulf state despite a court ruling that he was free to stay.

Both he and Bhutto were absent when Musharraf, a key US ally in the region, won his disputed October 6 re-election victory in a parliamentary vote boycotted by opposition forces.

In view of Bhutto's successful return to the country's political scene, the Saudi leadership is thought to have pressured Musharraf to readmit Sharif in time to file nomination papers for general elections set for January 8.

To confuse the picture, Attorney General Malik Qayyum said before the politician's arrival that he is ineligible to contest the polls on account of being previously sentenced on corruption charges.

None of this prevented him from trying to return once again with the blessing of Saudi King Abdullah, who threw a farewell banquet for Sharif before flying him home on his own private jet. The king also donated an armoured-plated limousine that was waiting for him when he arrived in Lahore.

Be it a chance appointment or indication of a genuinely equal opportunities mindset, Sharif may well be the only prominent politician in the world to have a one-legged driver.

Mohammed Ashfaq, 38, was first employed to chauffeur the politician in the early 1990s despite his disability, the result of a road accident as a child. Now he is back behind the wheel with his old boss in the backseat.

'Today is a great holiday for me because my beloved leader has come home,' said Ashfaq, flushed with pride.

With the politician firmly back on home turf, it remains to be seen this week if the PML-N will follow through on threats to boycott the elections with other opposition parties in protest at Musharraf's recent actions. These include suspending the constitution, sacking the top judiciary and locking up thousands of opponents.

But amid continued in-fighting and with key leaders in jail at the military president's orders, the opposition forces have failed to unite. Instead they appear one after the other to be hedging their bets and say they will file nomination papers for the polls 'under protest'.

It's all good news for the re-elected president: participation of the former prime ministers' parties will help legitimize the vote among fears of vote-rigging - even if their popularity can easily eclipse his own.

'The government is afraid because Nawaz Sharif is a hero of Pakistan, he is the founder of its atom bomb and atomic energy programme, and he has a place in the heart of the people,' Dr Syed Ali Hayder Shah, Vice President of the PML-N branch in the southern Sindh Province said as he waited in Lahore.