SUKKUR, Pakistan - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf made the country an international laughing stock by purging the judiciary after he imposed emergency rule in November, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif said on Monday.
Sharif, who returned from seven years in exile last month, took his campaign for January 8 elections to the southern province of Sindh, the heartland of another former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, where he acknowledged he had little support.
Sharif, ousted by Musharraf in 1999, has been campaigning for the parliamentary elections despite a ban on running because of past criminal convictions he says were politically motivated.
"Musharraf has made us a mockery by sacking the judiciary," Sharif told a crowd of about 3,000 at a rally in the main market area of the town of Sukkur on the Indus river.
"We are a laughing stock all over the world, even in India. We have to liberate our country of dictators," he said.
Musharraf, citing a meddling judiciary and rising militancy, imposed emergency rule on November 3. He purged the judiciary of judges seen as hostile to his October re-election by legislators while still army chief.
Emergency rule was lifted on December 15 after Musharraf stepped down as army chief and was sworn in as a civilian president. But he has refused to reinstate the judges.
Sharif had proposed boycotting the election unless the judges were reinstated but decided his party would take part after Bhutto refused to join a boycott. Bhutto says a new parliament can decide on the judges' fate.
Pakistan's allies hope the election will bring stability to the nuclear-armed country after months of turmoil and growing militant violence.
Pakistan's main stock index ended at an all-time closing high as investors took fresh positions amid growing confidence about politics, dealers said.
"HEROES"
Sharif would seem an unlikely champion of the judiciary.
