Interview with Imran Khan

ANDREW MARR: Imran Khan welcome and thank you for joining us. Your party is boycotting these elections.

Can you explain first of all they are, whatever the problems in the elections, they are elections taking place. Why are you not taking part in them?

IMRAN KHAN: Well simply because sixty per cent of our superior court judges have been sacked. The Chief Justice is under house arrest. The Election Commission is not independent, neither is the caretaker government. And the whole administration is working for the government candidates.

So in such an atmosphere, to fight elections in my opinion would be a waste of time. Because it, these elections are going to cause more problems than solve any. And it's certainly not going to take us towards democracy.

ANDREW MARR: And if the opposition parties don't win - and there's widespread assumption that vote rigging has taken place - what's that going to do to Pakistan?

IMRAN KHAN: Well vote rigging, pre-poll rigging, has already taken place. There will be massive rigging in this election as the tapes released of the Attorney General - they were taped by a journalist, released by the Human Rights Watch. They were all over the papers yesterday where the Attorney General is advising this guy who's a friend of his that look, stand with the, the government otherwise you're not going to win because there would be massive rigging.

Now in my opinion if, if they rig the election to the extent that the opposition doesn't win then I'm afraid we will have problems. There will be street protests. The extent of problems I can't tell you, but there will be more and more problems will increase. This, Musharraf at the moment and his king's party cannot solve Pakistan's problems any more.

ANDREW MARR: In an interview in one of the British papers, the Independent on Sunday, published here, your wife Jemima has interviewed President Musharraf - ex wife - and he says, President Musharraf that is, that he wants to be a kind of father figure to the new prime minister. But also describes the former, the Chief Justice who he deposed Mr Chaudhry, as the scum of the earth, a third rate man, a corrupt man. So he doesn't sound like somebody who's prepared to, to make a real compromise.

IMRAN KHAN: Well in the, in two thousand two elections, just before the elections, he said "All I want is for the electoral process to take place and then I want to play golf and take it easy". And in fact he had complete control, he micro managed the country. He, in fact it was a complete dictatorship, rubber stamp assembly. The elections were rigged the last time too.

He's saying exactly the same thing. No one believes him today. Now as for the Chief Justice, if he has sacked the Chief Justice because whatever he says of abuse of power, why has he sacked sixty per cent of the judges of the Superior Court? What, what wrong had they done?

Unfortunately all Musharraf wants is to cling to power any which way. He is, this election for him is heads I win, tails you lose. He's going to try and win every, any way he's going to use and that's where the problems are going to start.

Unfortunately I feel that in Pakistan this was a golden opportunity, had we had free and fair elections not only would the country have gone in the right direction but it would have equipped us to fight this, this extremism in Pakistan. Him manipulating the elections, if, if his King's Party wins I can tell you right now we have far greater problems ahead than we are facing right now.

ANDREW MARR: And so what should happen? What would you say to all those western governments who are watching?

IMRAN KHAN: There is only one thing that can get Pakistan out of this quagmire. Whether it is the economic meltdown, whether it is rising extremism, whether there's civil war in two provinces going on. The only way we can get out of this mess is we reinstate the legitimate constitutional judges of Pakistan. We, we reinstate them.

They then appoint the Election Commission. We have free and fair elections. And whichever government comes into power only that government will be considered legitimate. And they will have the credibility to deal with this extremism by mobilising the people. Unfortunately the western governments are backing Musharraf, George Bush specifically. And not only is anti-Americanism increasing but also extremism is increasing in Pakistan.

ANDREW MARR: Imran Khan, on that bleak note, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Interview with Nawaz Sharif

ANDREW MARR: Thank you very much indeed for joining us Mr Sharif. Can, can I first of all ask you ..

NAWAZ SHARIF: Thank you.

ANDREW MARR: .. about how you think this election is going. We've seen the violence, we've heard the allegations of vote rigging. How does it feel from where you are?

NAWAZ SHARIF: Well the atmosphere in this country is not really conducive for any free, fair and impartial elections. It's all stage managed by Mr Musharraf. Because he knows that his King's Party has nothing, has no ... in the country. And he is bent upon rigging the elections. The Q League which is the King's Party is not a proper party. It is a group of certain individuals. And I think they're going to lose very badly. So they're very heavily relying on Mr Musharraf's rigging plans.

ANDREW MARR: And if that succeeds, if Mr Musharraf does succeed in winning through in your view vote rigging, what happens to Pakistan?

NAWAZ SHARIF: Mr Musharraf will have to step down. Pakistan will return to democracy and rule of law. And the nineteen seventy three constitution will be restored. The judges whom he sack unceremoniously and without any constitutional authority will be restored.

The provisional constitutional order that he imposed on the third of November two thousand seven will be rolled back to the position of second November. So all these un-constitution steps will be restored. And we who are struggling for democracy, we will succeed and I think he will lose.

ANDREW MARR: But if he doesn't - that's my question. That's what happens if you win power. But what happens if he manages to hold on?

NAWAZ SHARIF: Well the, well the legal, well the legal, legal position is, the constitutional position is that we pass a resolution in the parliament and then issue executive order and the whole thing will be reversed, the, all the steps taken by Mr Musharraf on the third of November in which he also secured a judgment from a hand picked judiciary which declared him eligible to become the candidate for presidential elections will all be rolled back.

ANDREW MARR: You've I think met twice with Mrs Bhutto's widower. Can a deal be done between your two parties?

NAWAZ SHARIF: Yes. But we have to be very clear in our objectives and agenda. We have to have a common agenda. The common agenda is that we abandon military's role from politics forever. Number two, restoration of the judiciary as it stood on second November two thousand seven.

And number three a free press in this country including the restoration of the constitution of nineteen seventy three which was unanimously passed by the people of Pakistan. So these three are the basic things, fundamental things that we have as our manifesto in our agenda.

ANDREW MARR: You've been prime minister twice and twice you were deposed by the army. Why do you think the army's changed its spots? Why do you think it won't simply happen again?

NAWAZ SHARIF: Because the, the, the chief of army staff who, who is supposed to concentrate on his professional work steps out of his domain and enters into the political domain and considers himself as a super prime minister of the country. I think the constitution doesn't allow that. If the constitution doesn't allow that, if the law of the land doesn't allow that we cannot allow that.

ANDREW MARR: If these elections produce a new government, is it going to be a government with your party in it, possibly with Benazir Bhutto's old party in it as well that is able to deal with the extremism in the north of the country?

NAWAZ SHARIF: Well we want to have a government of national consensus. All the government democratic forces in the country must unite, unite against dictatorship which is the real cause of all these problems. We've never witnessed these kind of problems as extremism in this country when we had democratic governments here. It is only after Mr Musharraf's dictatorship that these problems have emerged.

And I think the answer lies in having a truly democratically elected parliament which is a truly representative body of the people of Pakistan who can sit down and devise policies and resolve these issues. The country today ..

ANDREW MARR: All right.

NAWAZ SHARIF: .. is in a very severe grip of terrorism. And you know - yeah.

ANDREW MARR: Well I was going to say thank you. I know you have got a, a very, very hectic twenty four hours ahead of you. Thank you very much indeed for spending the time to come and talk to us Mr Sharif. Thank you very much indeed.

NAWAZ SHARIF: Thank you.

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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