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Pakistanis Pour Scorn On Sharif's Exile To Saudi Arabia
ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistanis Monday poured scorn on military ruler General Pervez Musharraf for allowing deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif to be pardoned and exiled to Saudi Arabia over the weekend.
"There have been many ridiculous moments in Pakistan's crank politics that would make any delicate stomach churn, but the farce which unfolded this weekend beats them all," wrote The News daily in an editorial.
It angrily denounced the way Musharraf, who has staked his credibility on a tough anti-corruption drive, and his government justified "this most bizarre development."
"The total blanket of secrecy over the matter makes it another one of those underhand deals which in the past [has] given Pakistan its worst moments of shame and whose consequences are never thought out," it said.
Shortly after midnight Sunday, the government said Sharif, overthrown in a coup last year, had been pardoned of lengthy prison terms for hijacking and tax evasion and would be flown to Saudi Arabia within hours.
The only explanation was that Sharif had been complaining of heart trouble, a detail never independently confirmed, and the move was justified in the "national interest" and on humanitarian grounds.
"If so, why only a few dozen among a nation of [140 million people] were privy to the process of rendering this great national service ... " the News said.
"And how come just a few months ago the nation was being told that the exact opposite - keeping Nawaz Sharif in jail and prosecuting him - was in the national interest?"
It said Pakistan had been made to look foolish in the eyes of the world.
"All our pleas to the world for cooperation in catching the fraudsters living abroad appear a sorry sham," the News said, adding the deal with Riyadh "makes Pakistan look like a banana republic whose laws can be mashed and manipulated by external influence."
Musharraf, who toppled Sharif and vowed to stamp out corruption, has criticized Britain for allowing former prime minister Benazir Bhutto to live there despite her conviction for receiving kickbacks on state contracts.
Reports from Britain over the weekend said Downing Street had agreed to freeze Bhutto's assets and help Islamabad recover millions of dollars allegedly stashed away in foreign banks.
Leaders of Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) say that while the charges against Bhutto are unfounded, Sharif deserved the toughest punishment possible.
"Accountability has now come to naught and it has exposed the duality in standards that the military regime has exhibited since the coup," senior PPP leader Raza Rabbani said.
The main Islamic religious party, the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), bitterly attacked military rulers for going soft on Sharif.
Central JI leader Ghafoor Ahmed said the "army's image was not tarnished as much during the October 12 coup as it has been with the secret deal on December 9."
"The action clearly shows that any foreign power of some influence can take out any prisoner from the country, even if he had been convicted not only of corruption but also crimes like hijacking and terrorism."
Aftab Sheikh, the leader of Pakistan's third main political party, the ethnic Muttahida Qaumi Movement, said the "accountability process has gone with the wind like Sharif's family."
JI secretary general Syed Munawar Hussain demanded the powerful National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Musharraf's main instrument in the corruption crackdown, be disbanded.
Cricket-hero turned politician Imran Khan flayed the exit of Sharif, saying, "The episode has undermined the credibility of the entire accountability process and made mockery of the rule of law."
Under draconian laws introduced by the Musharraf regime, the NAB can arrest and detain people on suspicion of corruption for up to three months without charge or trial.
Dozens of people, from junior bureaucrats to former ministers and provincial governors, have been rounded up.
The U.S.-based Human Rights Watch last week accused the regime of torturing opposition politicians.
But a spokesman responded by saying the government "firmly believes in the rule of law and only corrupt politicians and bureaucrats who played havoc with national wealth are being targeted and brought to justice."
For her part, Bhutto has rejected the Pakistani military government's offer of a clemency for her jailed husband Asif Ali Zardari provided he surrendered his assets, her party said Monday.
"We believe in struggle, not surrender," said Nisar Khuro, central leader of the PPP.
"If the government wants it can confiscate his assets through the court," he quoted her as saying.
Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider earlier said the release and exile of Sharif on Sunday could be a model for Zardari, jailed for massive corruption in the late 1990s following Bhutto's last stint in power.
Haider told the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan that Zardari's release could be considered if he repented and surrendered his assets, using Sharif's case as a precedent.
Khuro said that the military rulers "after losing all moral authority over the release of Sharif through a secret deal, are now trying to give the impression that law is equal for all citizens."
They have been trying to break Zardari but "failed," he said.
PPP deputy secretary general Raza Rabbani said Bhutto was in touch with the party over the issue.
The government was facing "countrywide criticism" for Sharif's release and its ministers were looking out for to other candidates for clemency, Rabbani said.
Zardari has been in prison since Bhutto was sacked as prime minister in November 1996 by then president Farooq Ahmed Leghari.
He was shifted to a private hospital in southern Pakistan's Karachi city in August after he complained of back trouble and neck pain.
In 1998, while Sharif was in power, Zardari and Bhutto were convicted for receiving kickbacks on government contracts.
They were sentenced to five years jail each and ordered to pay around $8 million in fines, although Bhutto has lived in exile since her conviction in absentia. Both have filed appeals.
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