By Sarwar Kashani, IANS
New Delhi : Pakistan’s former minister Javed Jabbar says that the country may go through a period of “internal conflict and tension” after the Jan 8 polls which no party was strong enough to win on its own.
“No party in Pakistan currently has a nationwide strong electoral presence… it is segmented in different parts of the country on the basis of different aspects,” he said, predicting the country was heading for a hung parliament.
“The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) will have to forge a coalition to form a government and provide stability and security to the country,” he said.
“Assuming a new coalition government is formed, I think there will always be internal conflict and tension,” Jabbar, information and communication minister in 1999-2000, told IANS in an interview here.
The former Pakistani minister was in the capital to address an India-Pakistan peace convention organised by WISCOMP (Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace), a New Delhi-based research institute. The five-day peace conference started Sunday and has young participants from both the countries, including Kashmiris from across the border.
Pakistan, which was placed under emergency rule Nov 3 but had the emergency lifted on Dec 15, is to elect its new National Assembly Jan 8. The elections have received international attention, with President Pervez Musharraf recently quitting the post of army chief and promising a smooth transition to democracy.
Preferring not to comment on Musharraf while sitting on Indian soil, Jabbar was nevertheless worried about political stability in Pakistan.
“The recent change is more a cause for concern than for celebration,” he said.
Sitting at the India International Centre, Jabbar refused to buy opposition apprehensions that the coming elections in Pakistan would see mass rigging.
“I don’t agree there would be mass rigging of elections in Pakistan even though aberrations cannot be avoided,” said Jabbar, who owns an independent media house in Pakistan.
“Even in the last elections in 2002, which were hyped as unfair, the opposition PPP got the highest number of popular votes if not the seats,” he said while negating the worries voiced by former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto.
In the last elections the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam) got 25.7 percent of votes and won 126 seats while the PPP got 25.8 percent and won 81 seats in the 342-member national assembly.
Not sounding too critical of Musharraf for his recent actions of curbing media and judiciary through the emergency rule, Jabbar said: “We wish for the best now.”
However Jabbar, who has served as Musharraf’s minister, has been a strong critic of the president’s policies.
In his recent article published in Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper he had written: “While the uniform may be discarded for the first time in 43 years of service and after nine years as chief, the attributes of the person, particularly those that have become evident, are transferred intact, probably un-changed, into the civilian presidency. Can new garments change old traits?”