The Islami Jamhoori Ittehad ( Islamic Democratic Alliance;
acronym: IJI; ur, ) was a
right-wing
Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authorit ...
conservative alliance formed in September 1988 to oppose the democratic socialist
Pakistan Peoples Party
The Pakistan People's Party ( ur, , ; PPP) is a centre-left, social-democratic political party in Pakistan. It is currently the third largest party in the National Assembly and second largest in the Senate of Pakistan. The party was founded ...
in elections that year.
The alliance comprised nine parties, of which the major components were the
Pakistan Muslim League (PML),
National Peoples Party (NPP),
Jamaat-e-Islami
Jamaat-e-Islami ( ur, ) () is an Islamic movement founded in 1941 in British India by the Islamic theologian and socio-political philosopher, Syed Abul Ala Maududi.van der Veer P. and Munshi S. (eds.''Media, War, and Terrorism: Responses fro ...
(JI), with PML accounting for 80% of the IJI's electoral candidates. The
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, under director
Hamid Gul, had a major role in forming the right-of-centre political alliance. Care had been taken to ensure that the alliance comprised nine parties to generate comparison with the nine-party
Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) that had campaigned against PPP in 1977.
The head of the party was
Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, but its most resourceful leader was
Nawaz Sharif, a young industrialist whom
Zia ul-Haq had appointed
chief minister of Punjab. Sharif was vying for control of the Pakistan Muslim League, which was headed at that time by former Prime Minister
Muhammad Khan Junejo.
It won only fifty-three seats in the
National Assembly, compared with ninety-two won by the PPP. Most IJI seats were won in
Punjab.
Nawaz Sharif emerged from the 1988 elections as the most powerful politician outside the PPP. In December 1988, he succeeded in forming an IJI administration in Punjab and became the province's chief minister. It was from this power base that he waged the political battles that eventually led to his becoming
prime minister in 1990. In the supercharged atmosphere of the 1990 elections, the electorate surprised observers. Neither the IJI nor the PPP was expected to come up with a firm mandate to rule. Yet the IJI received a strong mandate to govern, winning 105 seats versus forty-five seats for the Pakistan Democratic Alliance (PDA), of which the PPP was the main component in the National Assembly. Opposition groups alleged large scale selective rigging of seats to not just ensure an IJI victory but also prevent those opposed to Military influence from being elected.
[How an election was stolen: the PDA white paper on the Pakistan elections (1990) Peoples Democratic Alliance]
In the 1993 national elections, the IJI coalition no longer existed to bring together all the anti-PPP forces. The religious parties expended most of their energies trying to form a workable electoral alliance rather than bolstering the candidacy of Nawaz Sharif, the only person capable of challenging
Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto ( ur, بینظیر بُھٹو; sd, بينظير ڀُٽو; Urdu ; 21 June 1953 – 27 December 2007) was a Pakistani politician who served as the 11th and 13th prime minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 t ...
.
Controversies
Islami Jamhori Ittehad was allegedly an establishment-backed political alliance against the Benazir Bhutto-led PPP, formed after doling out money to the politicians, which caused the PPP's defeat in the said general elections.
In 1993, former Air Chief Asghar Khan had moved SC against foul play in the 1990 general elections. The case is also known as
Mehrangate scandal.
References
{{reflist
Bibliography
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Husain Haqqani. ''Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military'', Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005.
See also
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Pakistan National Alliance
*
Politics of Pakistan
*
History of Pakistan
The history of preceding the country's independence in 1947 is shared with that of Afghanistan, India, and Iran. Spanning the western expanse of the Indian subcontinent and the eastern borderlands of the Iranian plateau, the region of prese ...
*
List of political parties in Pakistan
Conservative parties in Pakistan
Defunct political party alliances in Pakistan
Neoliberal parties
Pakistan Muslim League (N)
Political history of Pakistan