Bhutto's party begins poll process

Islamabad: Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on Thursday allowed its candidates to go ahead with filing their candidature for the January elections while keeping open its option of a poll boycott.

PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar said the party was holding consultations with other opposition parties to devise strategies going into the elections.

November 26 is the deadline fixed by the Election Commission for filing of nomination papers by prospective candidates. A final list of candidates would be issued on December 16 and polling is scheduled for January 8.

Babar said the PPP's participation in the election process would hinge on whether other mainstream opposition parties would boycott the election.

Mainstream opposition parties have been more or less unanimous in accusing President Pervez Musharraf of partisanship after he installed caretaker governments at the centre and in the four provinces.

They contend that fair, free and transparent polls are not possible while the constitution continues to be suspended and the media gagged under emergency rule.

"The party has advised its candidates to file their nomination papers subject to a decision to be arrived at by all the other parties on whether to participate in or to boycott the polls," Babar said.

Concerted action

He said PPP candidates would withdraw their nominations if other parties decided to boycott the polls.

Bhutto has been in touch with other parties and had on Wednesday spoken to the top Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leadership. She also apparently spoke to exiled former prime minister Nawaz Sharif after whom the PML-N is named. Sharif was deported to Saudi Arabia in September when he returned to Pakistan.

PML-N is part of the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM), an opposition coalition that includes the influential six-party Islamic alliance called Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) and cricket legend Imran Khan's Tehreek-e-Insaaf (Movement for Justice) party and other groups.

Leaders of APDM components are due to meet tomorrow to discuss the political situation and to decide on their election participation.

Imran Khan's party, despite his consistent calls for a poll boycott, placed a large advertisement in newspapers yesterday inviting people interested in contesting polls on its ticket to send their applications to its headquarters in Islamabad. Khan, however, told the media yesterday that polls held under the Musharraf regime would be a "farce" and opposition parties joining the fray would only be aiding the military ruler's quest for legitimacy.

"There is no point in the opposition going into elections with our hands tied behind back," said Khan, after being released yesterday.

Khan said he had talked with Nawaz Sharif, MMA president Qazi Hussain Ahmad and some other opposition leaders and that the latter had agreed that a poll boycott was the right course to adopt to frustrate Musharraf's designs to prolong his rule.

PML-N camp gets active

PML-N central leader Ishaq Dar, a former federal minister, said yesterday he was travelling to Saudi Arabia for urgent consultations with Nawaz Sharif ahead of the APDM meeting.

Dar expressed the hope that Sharif and his brother Shahbaz would be back in Pakistan before the November 26 deadline to file their nomination papers. The Saudi royalty was also in favour of the Sharif brothers returning to their homeland to play their role in domestic politics, he said.

"The elections will have no credibility at all if the PML-N leadership is prevented from taking part in the polls," Dar said.

Analysts said the opposition was visibly divided on the issue of a poll boycott after MMA secretary-general Maulana Fazlur Rehman's public statement that his Jamiat Ulema Islam party would not stay away.