You think things were bad in Pakistan? Think again; if Dawn‘s sources are worth anything, it’s now the policy of the British government, in the person of David Miliband, to get behind Nawaz Sharif and the Saudi lobby in Pakistani politics. We warned you; it looks like they’re heading for a kind of negative excellence ticket, like that time Chris Lightfoot and I were worrying that John Reid and Hazel Blears would get to be leader and deputy leader of the Labour Party.
The deal; Nawaz gets to be prime minister by hitting the squelch on his demands for Musharraf’s head, which can get awful literal in these parts. Mush stays on as president, at least until the army wants him out. And the elections might just be forever delayed. The Punjabis get total political control; the PPP gets to rage impotently, or burn shit down. Those parallel networks and Saudi intelligence links stay well and truly in place (they’re uncontrollable, you see).
Mr 10% isn’t sitting back; he’s pushing for elections to go ahead and threatening to take the bloody shawl on a tour of the Punjab, right into Musharraf’s and Nawaz’s back garden. For once he’s right, even though this sentence makes you wonder what the Urdu for chutzpah is: He snubbed the messengers and made it clear that he was not interested in any government office for the next five years and he would only look after his party. Right. And this is Lance-Bombardier Mirriband’s policy? Doesn’t he know Bradford is PPP country? Doesn’t he know Nawaz’s number one fan is the Saudi ambassador? This could go wrong in so many ways it’s not funny.
Is there any way for it to go right?