When two sworn and once-powerful enemies are in trouble, what do they do? Become friends, of course.
These are strange times for Pakistan. A military government announces a grassroots democracy plan and a local elections schedule, and a powerful former prime minister is convicted of corruption and disqualified from politics for 21 years. But most of all, a de facto end to the political careers of the country's two best-known politicians—Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.
A clever little amendment in the Political Parties Act by the military government means that not only can the convicted persons not take part in general elections, they can't even hold office in a political party. But Bhutto and Sharif are likely to be not the only victims. Influential Minister for Local Government, Omar Asghar, said at a recent seminar that "thousands of politicians" might be disqualified to give Pakistan a clean leadership for the future. Thousands! Whew!
The chief 'disqualifying machinery' is the dreaded National Accountability Bureau with the sinister acronym of NAB. A senior official of NAB confided that as many as half of the 600 politicians who contested the last general elections in 1997, may be declared ineligible from contesting for public office because they have filed in inaccurate statements of their assets and properties. "We have checked the statements filed with the Election Commission by most of the candidates who were elected to National Assembly and the four provincial assemblies and are not surprised to see that they are mostly grossly inaccurate," he said. Government officials say all political parties will have to elect new leaders who neither have been convicted in a court of law nor have any criminal cases pending, thus paving the way for a "third force".