ON THE RAPPROCHEMENT BETWEEN BENAZIR BHUTTO AND NAWAZ SHARIF





It is a truism that a clock that is fast is never right, and one that is slow is never right, but a clock that has stopped is right at least twice a day. Ms Benazir Bhutto and Mian Nawaz Sharif whose political clocks were stopped by General Musharraf in October 1999 are clearly hoping that, each having been prime minister of Pakistan twice, time will defy its own laws and allow at least one of them to become prime minister for a third time.


Such a miracle is not an improbability, for the Bhuttos and the Sharifs are already moving closer to each other, politically as well as physically. Recently, Shahbaz Sharif representing his brother Nawaz Sharif called on Benazir Bhutto in Dubai. It was certainly more than a social call. Some persons suspect that Shahbaz Sharif came with a proposal, a marriage of interests between her Pakistan's People's Party (minus the defectors who have added another P to their PPP) and that rump of the Pakistan Muslim League, left to the share of the Sharifs by opportunist defectors who have added an alphabet of initials to their own breakaway factions of the PML.


What is it that could have drawn the Sharifs and Benazir Bhutto together? Could it have been an antithetical magnetism, because they are poles apart? Or is it simply the outcome of a belated pragmatism? [EXTRACT]





Published in DAWN 16 March 2006.