The seizure of power by the military in Pakistan was accompanied by the dissolution of Parliament, the suspension of the Constitution and the incarceration of the ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif. None of this occasioned any surprise. Sharif's subsequent conviction and jail sentence were also along expected lines. But Sharif's exile last month to Saudi Arabia has introduced a new twist to Pakistani politics. Sharif's release flies in the face of the military regime´s pledge to conduct "fearless, honest and bipartisan accountability" of recent rulers. For Sharif, the price of freedom is 10 years of exile and an undertaking not to take part in Pakistani politics for 21 years. In addition, the government claims it has confiscated
bank deposits worth PNR 300 million (USD 5m), as well as five industrial properties, five residential plots and 24 hectares (60 acres) of agriculture land.
Whatever the circumstances that compelled Sharif's release, the military regime has now lost the very raison d'être for its present control of the country. As for the Pakistan Muslim League, it has been deprived of its leadership, while the Pakistan Peoples Party has egg on its face, having just concluded an alliance with Sharif against the military regime.
More to the point, Sharif's release has ramifications that advert quite substantively to political fundamentals. Even granting that there was much to the charges levelled against Sharif that were fictitious, his 'political' release, bypassing the due process, imparts a discretionary inflection to the administration of justice. Judicial independence is undermined by the political expediencies of the executive and there can be no clearer illustration of this than the continued confinement of Sharif's former ministers, aides and associates. Sharif´s allies, like former Sindh chief minister Ghaus Ali Shah, former Sindh police chief Rana Maqbool, and Shahid Khaqan of Pakistan International Airlines, are still in jail despite being acquitted by the courts. The pursuit of such expediencies by the government has raised awkward questions. As Benazir Bhutto put it, "If there was no criminal case against Sharif, why was he sacked, arrested and punished? And if there was a case against him, why has he been set free even though convicted by a court of law?"
The strategy pursued by the Musharraf regime also raises the possibility of a political vacuum of serious proportions and call to mind the consequences of Benazir Bhutto's self-exile two years ago after being hounded by Sharif. The prescient warning that the vacuum created by the weakening of the legitimate opposition would be filled by undemocratic forces was then unheeded. It was this politically corrosive strategy that led to the overthrow of Sharif's government by the military. As things stand now, the leaders of three major political formations are conveniently out of the way. What effects this will have in the elections, when they do happen, remains for the present a matter of speculation.