LONDON, 11 September 2007 — Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto aims to return from exile in October to contest national elections, a spokesman said yesterday.
“Mrs. Bhutto has decided to travel to Pakistan,” Beanzir’s spokesman Wajid Hassan told Reuters Television in an interview. “She has planned it next month, probably. She will announce it on Sept. 14 as to the date of her arrival in Pakistan.”
The announcement comes the same day another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was arrested and deported to Saudi Arabia within hours of arriving home from exile vowing to end the rule of President Pervez Musharraf.
Army chief Musharraf, who seized power from Sharif in 1999, is preparing to seek another term in a presidential election in the national and provincial assemblies some time between Sept. 15 and Oct. 15.
A general election is due around the end of the year.
“She has got to go back and lead the party into the elections, to campaign for the party in the elections,” Benazir’s spokesman said.
“I’m sure that there will be no compromise on it. She will go back and she will compete for the party and she will definitely win the elections.” Unlike Sharif, Benazir is in talks on a pact with the president, whose popularity has slumped since he tried to fire the Supreme Court chief in March, to let her return.
“So far they have not signed any deal. They have been engaged in talks among themselves for the peaceful transition to democracy through free and fair, transparent elections,” Hassan said.
He said an agreement was close but had not yet been struck as there were still some issues to be resolved.
Benazir wants Musharraf to step down as army chief, immunity from prosecution for herself and others who ruled in the late 1980s and 1990s and the lifting of a ban on a prime minister serving a third term. She also wants presidents stripped of the power to dissolve the National Assembly and dismiss governments.
In return, her party would bolster Musharraf’s support base and help clear the way for him to run for re-election after he quits as army chief by backing a constitutional change waiving a bar on state servants running for office.
Bhutto has already been prime minister of Pakistan twice. On both occasions she was dismissed from office by the president for suspected corruption.
