Word: sharif
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...Musharraf's legacy is a mixed one. Like many Pakistanis, I was appalled when he seized control of Pakistan in 1999. Pakistan had stagnated in the 1990s under the bickering and incompetent elected governments of Benazir Bhutto and her rival Nawaz Sharif. But I recalled the damage done by the oppressive dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s and had no desire to see Pakistan revert to military rule...
...that Musharraf has gone, the country needs to come together. Too much time has been spent blaming Musharraf rather than finding solutions to Pakistan's pressing problems. Pakistan must look to the future and break decisively from its past. For Sharif and Bhutto's widower Asif Zardari, leaders of the two mainstream parties, this means avoiding a return to the vindictiveness and squabbling that characterized relations between their parties in the 1990s and undermined Pakistan's previous experiment with democracy. Their first test will be the selection of a new President, where it is essential that a nonpartisan, mutually acceptable...
Today's civilian leaders will also be mindful of the military's belief that then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif provoked his own ouster by moving, under U.S. pressure, to rein in the military after its offensive against Indian forces in the Kargil region of Kashmir had brought the two countries to the brink of war. Still, so dismal had Pakistan's outlook been after a decade of the self-serving political duopoly of Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party and Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League, that many in the West and in Pakistan's urban middle classes saw Musharraf...
...With his authority draining, Musharraf was forced to make a series of ruinous concessions. Washington urged him to broaden his political base and enter a power-sharing agreement with the late Benazir Bhutto. Musharraf allowed Bhutto to come back to Pakistan, and Sharif returned weeks later. In the face of domestic and international pressure, Musharraf had to shed his uniform - the source of much of his authority. Matters grew worse when Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi in late December. And a relatively free and fair general election in February stripped Musharraf of a loyal government as his allies suffered...
...focus is turning toward Pakistan's delicately stitched-together coalition government, for which Musharraf has proved a source of common enmity and cohesion. The two parties led by Sharif and Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, could start wrangling over Musharraf's freshly evacuated seat. Zardari has deflected suggestions that he's interested, but suspicions linger that he may wish to become the next head of state - if only as a ceremonial figure. The coalition has vowed to claw back the wide-ranging powers with which Musharraf endowed the presidency...