Political Enemies
	Power in Exile
	By Anthony Spaeth Islamabad

Benazir Bhutto was Prime Minister of Pakistan twice in the past two decades, yet she hasn't been on Pakistani soil for more than three years. These days, she lives in exile in London and Dubai to avoid a jail sentence for corruption. Mian Mohammed Nawaz Sharif also ran the country twice before being overthrown by Pervez Musharraf in a 1999 coup. Having been deported, he's cooling his heels in Saudi Arabia.

Musharraf can't stand either and no wonder: they remain his two most powerful political rivals. It doesn't matter that they're abroad, that they disappointed in office, that both have been accused of corruption and misrule: when Pakistanis go to the polls, they vote in vast numbers for Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party and Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (PML). In the last general election, the two parties won 70% of the National Assembly's seats.

This phenomenon goes back decades. Pakistan doesn't have a two-party system in the American sense; its politics are dominated by parties that deliver jobs, contracts and other types of patronage. Their leaders bring with them an added cult of personality that further enhances the parties' appeal to voters. Not surprisingly, Musharraf is rejiggering election rules to do an end run around Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. But that has its own risks. Pakistan's last military ruler, General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, tried a similar ruse in 1985 by holding "partyless" elections—which were widely dismissed as bogus. "Every new dictator thinks the earlier ones were naive, they weren't as clever as he is," says Raja Zafar-Ul-Haq, chairman of the PML. Washington denies that it has given Musharraf a nod and wink to hold elections any way he wishes as long as he remains a key ally in the war on terror. "We haven't given him a blank check," says a senior State Department official, "and we will certainly be watching very closely." Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif have to decide whether to boycott the elections and risk irrelevance, or contest under the new rules. Bhutto's spokesman insists the former Prime Minister will contest "even if it is from behind bars." In the meantime, Musharraf is doing his best to keep the opposition under lock and key.

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