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ISLAMABAD, Nov. 4, Reuter: A rightwing Pakistani alliance challenging opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in general elections this month said it opposed a woman becoming head of government on Islamic grounds.
A spokesman for the nine-party Islamic democratic alliance (IDA) said on Thursday Bhutto, being a woman, should not head the government in Islamic Pakistan even if her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) won the November 16 polls.
“It will be a very bitter pill if the head of state or government has to be a lady,” Ida information secretary Agha Murtaza Pooya told a news conference.
The ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) party of former Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejo is the main force in the IDA formed last month to face the PPP, widely regarded as a strong contender in the November 16 elections.
Officials of some IDA parties told an election rally in the northwestern town of Peshawar on Wednesday that Pakistan’s overwhelmingly Moslem population would not accept 4 women as their government leader
Pooya said this was IDA’s official position taken in the light of Islamic law
PML sources said Junejo does not agree with this position, which they say is taken by hardline religious groups like the IDA’s Jamaat—I—Islami party.
Pro PPP and Liberal Islamic clergymen say Islam places no bar on woman heading a governent.
The PML and Jamaat-I-Islamic both backed Fatima Jinnah, sister of Pakistan’s founder Mohammad. Ali Jinnah, in the 1964 Presidential elections won by field Marshal Ayub Khan.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 11, 1988
