In Islamabad, supporters of Imran Khan’s party, which finished well behind Nawaz Sharif and his party in the election, protesting vote-rigging. 
The site of the bombing. Attacks across the country left at least 20 people dead.Credit: Asif Hassan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Supporters of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif celebrated in Lahore, Pakistan, on Saturday. The party led by Mr. Sharif, who was once a political exile, appeared to have enough seats to form a government easily.Credit: Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesSharif vs. Army, Round 3
By DECLAN WALSH
Published: May 13, 2013
LONDON — The last time that Nawaz Sharif had close dealings with the Pakistani Army, soldiers handcuffed him and imprisoned him in an ancient fort overlooking the Indus River, physically dragging him from office in a coup.
Now that Mr. Sharif is poised to return as prime minister of Pakistan for the third time in 20 years, the success of his relationship with the generals will revolve around two related questions: Has he changed? And have they?
Many analysts believe he has new tools at his disposal, and in recent days he has played down the prospect of conflict with the army. Much of the hopeful talk surrounding his landslide victory on Saturday is focused on how Mr. Sharif seems different — more mellow, less authoritarian — than during his two previous stints as prime minister in the 1990s. And he returns to power with a mandate from Pakistani voters who have apparently given his party a near outright majority in Parliament.
When the military deposed him in 1999, he had earned the displeasure of its leadership for his outreach to India — which this week he promised to renew — as well as his clumsy attempt to fire the army chief, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Since then, the military has faced several humiliations, including the American commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, that have hurt its public image. And under Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the army has shown little public appetite for openly meddling in politics, much less mounting another coup.
Against that backdrop, the success — and perhaps length — of Mr. Sharif’s tenure will be determined by how he negotiates the relationship with Pakistan’s unelected power players. They include the United States, an ally with whom he has a long and sometimes unhappy history and that has worried about his vigor in fighting Islamist militants. There is a newly crusading judiciary to gauge. And above all loom the generals, and his tense history with them.
His career was midwifed in the mid-1980s by Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the military dictator, then cut short by the 1999 coup that brought General Musharraf to power. Mr. Sharif spent years in exile in Saudi Arabia.
Bitterness from that painful episode was widely believed to have colored Mr. Sharif’s attitude to the army after he returned to Pakistan in 2007. For a time, he regularly hurled rhetorical broadsides at the military that made even members of his own party, who are pro-military by inclination, uncomfortable.
In recent months, Mr. Sharif has adopted a more conciliatory tone. On Monday, he glossed over any differences, telling reporters that his problem had been with General Musharraf’s coup, not with the military as a whole.
“I think the rest of the army resented Mr. Musharraf’s decision,” he said. “So I don’t hold the rest of the army responsible for that.”
Still, there are hints that Mr. Sharif will insist on asserting his authority in ways that could put the generals on edge. In interviews with the Indian news media in recent days, Mr. Sharif stressed his desire to normalize relations with New Delhi — a subject that the army, which has fought three major wars with India — views as its central concern.
“Those statements might seem normal to outsiders,” said Cyril Almeida of Dawn, a leading English-language newspaper in Pakistan. “But inside the army it could set alarm bells ringing.”
On a different front, the country’s newly assertive Supreme Court also presents Mr. Sharif with a challenge, and perhaps some opportunity.
The previous government found itself embroiled in legal battles with the buccaneering chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who conducted his longstanding rivalry with President Asif Ali Zardari and his Pakistan Peoples Party through a series of high-profile court cases.
At the same time, judges have been relatively lenient with Mr. Sharif. Cases related to bank loans that his family defaulted on in the 1990s, and payments that Mr. Sharif received from military intelligence about the same time, all received relatively light treatment.
“The Supreme Court only had one eye, and it was trained on the Peoples Party,” said Ayaz Amir, a former lawmaker from Mr. Sharif’s party.
But now that he is in power, Mr. Sharif’s cozy relationship with the courts could come under strain. Under Justice Chaudhry, the courts have amassed new powers, hauling senior government officials before judges to account for their failings on matters ranging from blatant corruption to the weaknesses of the traffic system.
Analysts say Mr. Sharif, who also has a stubborn streak, could find himself drawn into a clash with Justice Chaudhry.
“Sharif might look at this court and find it a bit too activist for his liking, with its tendency to push government up against the wall,” said Mr. Almeida, the journalist. “I don’t think he would look on it very benignly.”
Still, the potential for conflict may be limited: Justice Chaudhry is set to retire in December, which leaves relatively little time for a battle between the courts and Mr. Sharif.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Sharif played to populist sentiment by condemning C.I.A. drone strikes in the tribal belt and suggesting, in vague terms, that he would seek to avoid bowing to American dictates. But the perilous state of Pakistan’s economy means that he may require American support for a bailout by the International Monetary Fund — one that economists believe will be necessary in the coming months.
Behind the scenes, American diplomats are likely to pressure him for stronger action against militants. Mr. Sharif was measured in the campaign in his criticism of the Taliban, which notably did not attack his party’s election events as they did those of more secular parties. Indeed, the perception that Mr. Sharif had an ambiguous view, at best, toward militants was a constant source of tension with American officials during his first stints in office.
Mr. Sharif may now come under pressure — from the army as well as the United States — to clamp down on militant havens in his home province of Punjab, parts of which have become hotbeds of sectarian violence led by Sunni extremist groups.
But in foreign policy, Mr. Sharif has another source of support: his close relationship with Saudi Arabia, where he whiled away his exile. King Abdullah helped broker Mr. Sharif’s return to Pakistan in 2007, and Mr. Sharif maintains close ties with Riyadh. That relationship, although discreet, could provide an alternative source of economic aid, as well as a powerful ally.
As Mr. Sharif welcomed foreign reporters on Monday to his palatial home outside Lahore, replete with stuffed lions and gilded furniture, he spoke with the confidence of a leader holding crucial cards.
A measure of that confidence, and a test of his intent, are close at hand.
His old nemesis, General Musharraf, is under house arrest at his villa outside Islamabad over several judicial prosecutions. The Supreme Court has decreed that Mr. Sharif’s administration will have to decide whether the former army ruler should face treason charges, which carry a possible death penalty.
A steel baron by background, and conservative by inclination, Mr. Sharif has long had a reputation as a man who does not forgive or forget. The Musharraf case presents him with an obvious opportunity for revenge. But even critics say he has softened over the years, and is more likely to take a lenient approach in the interest of avoiding an unnecessary confrontation with the army.
“He’s a more mature person now, less impulsive than before,” Mr. Amir said. “It would be very foolish to start settling scores. I think the Musharraf case will be a major test of that.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/world/asia/pakistan-vote-revives-premiers-rivalry-with-army.html?ref=asia
May 13, 2013
Pakistani Leader Moves Quickly to Form Government
By SALMAN MASOOD
LONDON — Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif moved confidently to form a new government in Pakistan on Monday, signaling his choice to be the next finance minister even as votes from Saturday’s election were still being tallied and protests continued over alleged vote-rigging in some cities.
Mr. Sharif’s spokesman, Siddiqul Farooq, said that given the party’s priority on the economy, the likely choice for finance minister would be Ishaq Dar, who served in the post twice in the 1990s — a critical job in a country suffering from sharp economic decline that is likely to necessitate a bailout from the International Monetary Fund.
“No official announcement has been made yet but Mr. Dar is the most experienced man for the finance job. He is an expert in finance and audits and accounts,” Mr. Farooq said, adding that Mr. Sharif was also finalizing other cabinet choices during his meetings in Lahore throughout the day.
During the election campaign, Mr. Sharif, a former steel baron, campaigned heavily on his ability to turn around the ailing economy and end electricity shortages that can last for 18 hours in some parts of the country. A fiscal conservative, he is seen as favoring free market economics and deregulation. News of his apparent victory has prompted a large rally on Pakistan’s main stock exchange, in Karachi.
Successive projections since the voting on Saturday have put Mr. Sharif’s party, known by the abbreviation PML-N, ever closer to an outright majority in the 272-seat cabinet. Mr. Farooq said the party was sure to win at least 125, just 12 short of a majority, and that most of the 23 independent candidates that seemed sure to win seats had already begun talking about joining in coalition with Mr. Sharif.
Still, the vote tally was still very much in progress on Monday, with election officials saying that final results would not come before midweek at earliest. Still, Arif Nizami, the caretaker information minister, said at a news conference in Islamabad that the new government would easily take shape before the June 2 constitutional deadline.
Meanwhile, Imran Khan, the anti-corruption crusader whose campaign generated wide excitement but failed to make the predicted inroads against Mr. Sharif, concentrated his efforts on forming a government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, in northwestern Pakistan.
Javed Hashmi, a senior official with Mr. Khan’s party, said it was in negotiations with the religious Jamaat-e-Islami Party to form a coalition administration in the province, which has borne the brunt of Taliban violence and adjoins the tribal belt where the C.I.A. has concentrated its campaign of drone strikes.
Projections give Mr. Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party 35 out of the 99 seats in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Legislature, making it the single largest party. Jamaat-e-Islami is thought to have about seven seats.
Speaking from his hospital bed in Lahore, where he suffered a serious fall in the final days of the election campaign and badly injured his back, Mr. Khan broadly welcomed the election. “We are now moving toward democracy,” he said.
But his supporters have been driven several protest efforts since the voting, claiming extensive fraud in Karachi and Lahore. New demonstrations were held in both cities on Monday.
The furor over vote-rigging highlighted a phenomenon in Pakistani politics: the emergence of social media as a tool of both electoral mobilization and protest. While the last poll, in 2008, was influenced by a raft of new private television channels, this weekend’s election gave new weight to Twitter and Facebook.
Candidates appealing to the youth vote, like Mr. Khan, rallied supporters through the Internet, and since the vote, have used it to engage in tight, real-time scrutiny of the ballot process.
Mr. Khan’s supporters have posted video taken on cellphones of alleged rigging. In one, Khawaja Saad Rafique, the candidate who defeated Hamid Khan in Lahore, is seen having a heated argument inside a polling station for women.
Still, the impact of social media is mostly confined to the country’s wealthy minority and had little effect in places like Baluchistan, the western province where the threat of violence caused a very low turnout.
Two other major parties in the election, the formerly governing Pakistan Peoples Party and the Awami National Party, announced on Monday that they had accepting projections showing that they had lost extensive ground to Mr. Sharif’s PML-N party.
Asfandyar Wali Khan, the leader of Awami National Party, which was routed in its traditional stronghold of Khyber-Pakhtunkwa province, said in a news release t that despite reservations over a terrifying campaign of violence against his party in the run up to the elections, he accepted the results.
Yusuf Raza Gilani, the former prime minister and senior vice president of Pakistan Peoples Party, also announced his resignation from party position Monday evening. Mr. Gilani was barred from contesting for the parliament by the Supreme Court last year. Three of his sons and one brother lost the Saturday election in Multan, which was earlier considered their stronghold.
Almost all leading Pakistan Peoples Party politicians lost their seats in Punjab.
“I accept responsibility,” Mr. Gilani said. “I accept public’s decision,” he said, stressing that the crippling power shortages and a critical media led to his party’s downfall.
Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, and Waqar Gillani from Lahore.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/world/asia/pakistan-election-developments.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fworld%2Fasia%2Findex.jsonp&_r=0