By IANS
Islamabad : Undeterred by an assassination attempt on her last week, former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto has plunged headlong into the country’s politics by eyeing major positions in the caretaker governments that will be put in place ahead of the general elections to be held early next year.
President Pervez Musharraf will, however, still hold the key as he will appoint the interim administrations at the federal and provincial levels in the run up to the polls.
“In closed-door discussions with presidential aides, Bhutto’s representatives have started putting forward her demands about the Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) share in the interim arrangement that would be in place after Nov 15,” The News reported Monday, quoting a source.
Musharraf is to name a provisional prime minister, interim chief ministers of Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan, as also 30 members of their cabinets, to conduct the polls. The North West Frontier Province (NWFP) is already under federal rule, with the chief minister having quit in the wake of the Oct 6 presidential poll that saw Musharraf being elected for a second term in office.
“However, the president will be sitting over and above these provisional ministers,” The News noted.
Apart from the ministers, the PPP has also demanded that the four provincial governors be replaced with its nominees to ensure free, fair and transparent elections.
“Musharraf is opposed to showing the door to the governors on the ground that they would not have much to do with the general polls as the interim set-ups to be headed by the chief ministers would be largely responsible for overseeing the electoral process,” the newspaper said.
Musharraf has assured the PPP that the governors would be non-partisan. He also said that Sindh Governor Ishratul Ebad, a member of the ruling Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), would not interfere to favour his party.
“Even during the talks for the consummation of a (power-sharing) deal between Musharraf and Bhutto, the PPP interlocutors had expressed their party’s stand on picking the caretakers,” The News said.
“A source said that the primary attention of Bhutto is on having her choice of representatives in the Punjab and Sindh provinces because these two federating units would play a decisive role in the formation of the federal and two provincial governments after the elections,” it added.
Toward this, the source said, Bhutto has “fired her first political salvo” targeting her two arch rivals — Punjab Chief Minister Pervez Elahi and his Sindh counterpart Arbab Ghulam Rahim — “as her avowed opponents associated with the present government”.
“If she succeeds in getting her nominees installed in Punjab and Sindh, she would have a remarkably favourable setting to make a very good showing in the elections,” the source added.
By naming Elahi and Arbab, as also Intelligence Bureau chief Ejaz Shah as being behind Thursday’s Karachi bombings that killed at least 139 people, Bhutto was “apparently putting the two chief ministers under pressure. It is a political move rather than an indication of them actually being behind the bombing,” The News said.
It also quoted an official to say that Musharraf “would try not to nominate any controversial or highly politicised person as caretaker prime minister or chief minister so that accusing fingers are not raised at the electoral process”.