Sharif in exile, `expelled’ says wife

“We are not running away in the darkness of night,” she said, just before she left in a police motorcade for the airport. “We are being expelled from this country.” Although Sharif’s wife denied a deal had been made, she had emphasised in the hours before the exile was announced that she would jump at any offer to leave.

A Saudi source said in Jeddah that the plane had landed there. Sharif is to stay in Jeddah for a mini-pilgrimage to nearby Mecca and Medina, home of Islam’s holiest sites. He will also travel to Riyadh to undergo medical tests at the capital’s military hospital.

Today’s development will profoundly affect the course of politics in Pakistan. It immediately relieves the junta of the pressure that the political forces had been building up for the restoration of democracy.

It was just last week that Sharif had joined his worst enemy, Benazir Bhutto, in an Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD). Sharif’s move will deepen the demoralisation among his “ardent partners” and his own party. This would tarnish the image of both Sharif (because he used to claim that he thrived on confrontation) and the junta (because it pardoned a man it had jailed on charges of terrorism and corruption).

The unexpected “deal” with the government appeared to shock many in Sharif’s party. In a last-minute piece of political housekeeping, Javed Hashemi was named acting head of the Muslim League. Kulsoom, although carrying no title, had taken on that role for herself while her husband was in prison. Hashemi was quick to deny his party had reached any deal with the Army.

But Dawn newspaper, quoting sources in Sharif’s party, said under the deal the former premier and his family would not return to Pakistan for 10 years.

Columnist Irshad Ahmad Haqqani writing in the mass-circulation newspaper, Jang, warned today that weakening of the political forces might encourage the junta to stay in power beyond the October 2002 deadline set for it by the country’s Supreme Court.

The military regime’s statement said under an agreement with General Pervez Musharraf, Sharif would not have to serve his sentences, which included a life term, but forfeit 500 million rupees ($8.3 million) in property and stay out of politics for the next 21 years.

“On the advice of the Chief Executive (Musharraf), the President of Pakistan, according to law, has pardoned Nawaz Sharif’s remaining jail sentence while the rest of the punishment…will remain in place,” said the announcement.

Friends had gathered at the family home in Islamabad while workers loaded suitcases aboard a van to take them to the waiting Saudi plane. Sharif, meanwhile, was brought from the army’s Attock fortress on the banks of Indus River.

Those heading to exile in Saudi Arabia included Sharif’s wife, Kulsoom, his father, his son and a younger brother jailed on similar charges. It was the first time a Pakistani government had exiled a former leader; one Prime minister was hanged after a coup.

The government said Sharif had asked for clemency from Musharraf. In the past month he has also complained of heart trouble. “Recently, Pakistan’s closest friend Saudi Arabia offered the government of Pakistan to accept the Sharif family for medical treatment on humanitarian grounds if exiled to their country,” said the statement.

Now at least two prime ministers of Pakistan are living abroad, unable to return to their homeland. Benazir Bhutto, Sharif’s predecessor, left Pakistan before the coup and was convicted of corruption in absentia. Her husband has been in a Pakistani jail without charge for several years.

Benazir Bhutto expressed “surprise” over Sharif’s sudden exit from the country. In a strong statement published in a Urdu daily, Ausaf today, Bhutto said she never expected “such a baffling move” from the PML and it would be asked for an explanation.

“It is strange that we were not taken into confidence about such a clandestine deal,” she said.