Poll tension grips Pakistan as ousted PM flies home to face jail

ABU DHABI/LAHORE (Reuters) - Ousted Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam, both sentenced to lengthy jail terms in absentia, were flying back to Pakistan on Friday in a high-stakes gamble to galvanize their beleaguered party ahead of a July 25 election.

The plane carrying Sharif and his daughter was due to land in the central city of Lahore at around 8 p.m. (1500 GMT), and they were expected to be immediately arrested.

Their return could shake up an election race marred by accusations Pakistan’s powerful military is working behind the scenes to skew the contest in favor of ex-cricket hero Imran Khan, who describes Sharif as a “criminal” who deserves no support.

Clashes broke out Friday evening at the main highway entry point to Lahore between pro-Sharif protesters and police who had been deployed in their thousands, a Reuters witness said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Mobile phone service was cut off by mid-afternoon, as Sharif’s brother, Shehbaz, led around 10,000 supporters of his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) on a march toward the city center in defiance of a citywide ban on public gatherings, according to a Reuters witness.

Nawaz Sharif decried the tactics ordered by the caretaker government that took over in June ahead of the general election, as Pakistan’s constitution requires.

“What credibility will these elections have when the government is taking such a drastic action against our people and this crackdown is taking place all over the country?” Sharif told Reuters at the airport in Abu Dhabi as he waited for a connecting flight to Lahore.

Pakistan’s third major political movement, the Pakistan Peoples Party, joined the criticism of the crackdown, with its prime ministerial candidate Bilawal Bhutto Zardari questioning why Sharif’s supporters would be arrested and prevented from gathering.

“Why is Lahore under siege? Right to peaceful protest is fundamental for democracy,” tweeted Bhutto Zardari, the son of two-time prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated at a political rally in 2007.

The country’s media regulator warned local news channels to abstain from airing statements “by political leadership containing defamatory and derogatory content targeting various state institutions specifically judiciary and armed forces”, the regulator said in a statement.

Adding to the tension surrounding the upcoming poll, a suicide bomber hit an election rally of a regional party in southwestern Pakistan, killing 70 people. The bombing was the biggest attack in Pakistan in more than a year and the third incident of election-related violence this week.

Sharif is returning from Britain one week after an anti-corruption court handed him a 10-year jail term and sentenced his daughter and political heir to seven years in prison after they failed to prove that money used to buy luxury flats in London in the 1990s was not ill-gotten.

Sharif alleges the military is aiding a “judicial witch-hunt” against him and his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party. The party’s past five years in power has been punctuated by the civil-military discord that has plagued Pakistan since its inception.

The military, which has ruled Pakistan for about half its history since 1947, has denied interfering in modern-day politics. It plans to place 371,000 soldiers around polling stations so there can a “free and fair” elections, an army spokesman said this week.

Sharif’s PML-N expects a groundswell of support as he returns from London, where his wife Kulsoom is critically ill and undergoing cancer treatment.

To prevent PML-N workers staging a hero’s welcome on the streets, authorities said they will arrest the father and daughter upon landing and transport them to the capital Islamabad by helicopter, local media reported.