LAHORE: Pakistani opposition leader Nawaz Sharif welcomed a call for reconciliation from President Asif Ali Zardari yesterday, a week after the government averted a political crisis by restoring the country’s top judge.
Sunday came and nothing happened. There was no confrontation between the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz). There was no bitterness between signatories of the Charter of Democracy and no more deficit of trust between the leadership of the two main parties.
Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani held crucial and decisive talks with Nawaz Sharif who was accompanied by his brother Shahbaz Sharif, Leader of Opposition Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and PML(N) legislator Khwaja Asif.
Television images showed the two leaders smiling while interacting in a cordial atmosphere.
The power-hungry party that ruled Pakistan under military dictator Pervez Musharraf — Pakistan Muslim League(Q) — stood isolated as its leadership attempted to create a wedge between the PPP and the PML(N).
Gilani sought to allay those fears when he met with Sharif. “The prime minister has given a message by President, which I think is welcomed,” Sharif told a joint news conference with Gilani at the opposition leader’s residence outside Lahore.
“I think it is need of the time, it’s the need of Pakistan and in line with the aspiration of the people,” Sharif said.
Gilani said he wanted to end central, or governor’s, rule in Punjab, the most populous and influential of Pakistan’s four provinces, and let whichever party had a majority form a new government there.
Sharif said the next steps forward should include implementation of a “Charter for Democracy” that he and fellow former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Zardari’s late wife, had agreed in 2006, a year before their return from exile. Sharif also reiterated his call for changes in the constitution, to remove sweeping presidential powers and strengthen the role of Parliament and the prime minister.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani chief justice whose ouster spurred waves of protests that led to a president’s downfall returned to work yesterday.
In Islamabad, hundreds of jubilant lawyers and political and rights activists gathered outside IIftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry’s residence for a flag-hoisting ceremony to mark his formal reinstatement as Supreme Court chief justice yesterday. Tomorrow, he will return to the Supreme Court he was evicted from on the night of Nov. 3, 2007, when Musharraf declared emergency rule.
With input from agencies
