October 10, 2006	Tuesday	Ramazan 16, 1427

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KARACHI, Oct 9: Former federal minister Begum Abida Hussain on Monday called for ‘bipartisan democratic dispensation’ and said she and her husband Syed Fakhar Imam might join a political party after the elections were announced.

Talking to Dawn here, she hinted at her inclination towards the Pakistan People’s Party from where she had started her political career under the leadership of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. However, she was mindful of the ‘retractors’ and also indicated the possibility of adopting an independent course.

The politician from Jhang has contested thrice as an independent candidate because “she was not dependent on anybody’s vote bank”.

It was an obvious reference to the understanding between the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League (N) that neither side would accept each other’s deserters which could block her return to a liberal party.

Begum Abida said that after losing in the 2002 elections she started looking back to the years she had been associated with the ‘liberal party’. She eventually joined the PML(N). She was part of the PML (N) until Mian Nawaz Sharif and his family were sent into exile. After that she joined Mian Azhar’s PML(Q).

She said she believed that for restoration of democracy Mr Sharif and Benazir Bhutto should come to some agreement. She said that when the two leaders signed the charter of democracy she and her husband Fakhar Imam went to London and met the PPP and PML(N) leaders.

She said that since the charter of democracy was signed General Pervez Musharraf took various ‘negative’ measures to divide the opposition alliance and parties.

Begum Abida was critical of Gen Musharraf’s policies and said that Pakistan could not sustain the impact of another rigged elections. The general, she claimed, could not afford to allow free and fair elections “because that would vote out his mercantile cronies.”

She demanded an ‘independent’ election commission comprising judges who had not taken oath under the provisional constitutional orders, some civil servants of integrity, along with former chairmen of Senate and speakers of national and provincial assemblies.

Begum Abida pointed to the “fracturing of the government-led coalition as well as of opposition political parties and alliances”. She spoke of differences between the MQM and the ruling PML. She disputed Gen Musharraf’s claim that he was instrumental in the formation of the PML(Q) and said the PML(Q) had been formed by Mian Mohammad Azhar.