Nawaz Sharif to Launch Poll Campaign

Sudan Events – Sumaya Sayed

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, whose party is considered a front-runner to win general elections in February, will kick off his campaign next week, aides said, days after the Supreme Court cleared him to run for a fourth term.

The campaign for the February 8 poll, delayed since November, looks set to fire up a lackluster race in an uncertain political environment after Sharif’s main rival and former premier Imran Khan, was jailed and disqualified from contesting.

“We will, God willing, start our mass campaign on January 15,” Pervaiz Rashid, a close Sharif aide told Reuters, adding that the former premier would speak at a rally two days later.

Analysts believe the South Asian nation’s powerful military has thrown its backing to Sharif, 74, after it was locked in a standoff with former cricket star Khan, 71.

That gives Sharif an edge in a country where army generals mostly decide on making or breaking governments.

“Sharif is a front-runner because he and his party are back in the military’s good graces,” said Michael Kugelman, a South Asia specialist at Washington think tank the Wilson Center.

“In the polarized, vendetta-driven environment of Pakistani politics, it is brutally simple: Nawaz is a bitter rival of Imran Khan, and that serves the army well, which turned on Khan and doesn’t want him to return to power.”

The military’s public relations wing did not respond to a request for a comment.