The Islami Jamhoori Ittehad ( Islamic Democratic Alliance;

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

: IJI; ur, ) was a right-wing conservative alliance formed in September 1988 to oppose the democratic socialist Pakistan Peoples Party in elections that year. The alliance comprised nine parties, of which the major components were the

Pakistan Muslim League The Pakistan Muslim League ( ur, ; known as PML), is the name of several different Pakistani political parties that have dominated the right-wing platform in the country. The Muslim League (a different party) was the party of Pakistan’ ...

(PML), National Peoples Party (NPP), Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), with PML accounting for 80% of the IJI's electoral candidates. The

Inter-Services Intelligence The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI; ur, , bayn khadamatiy mukhabarati) is the premier intelligence agency of Pakistan. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant ...

(ISI) agency, under director

Hamid Gul Lieutenant General Hamid Gul ( ur, ‎; 20 November 1936 – 15 August 2015) was a three-star rank army general in the Pakistan Army and defence analyst. Gul was notable for serving as the Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligenc ...

, 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 The Pakistan National Alliance (Urdu: پاکستان قومی اتحاد, Acronym: PNA), was a populist and consolidated right-wing political alliance, consisting of nine political parties of the country. Formed in 1977, the country's leading ...

(PNA) that had campaigned against PPP in 1977. The head of the party was

Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi Ghulam Mustafa ‘Joseph’Jatoi (Sindhi:غلام مصطفا جتوئي) ( ur, ) (14 August 1931 – 20 November 2009) was a Pakistani politician who served as the Caretaker Prime Minister of Pakistan for three months, from 6 August 1990 to ...

, but its most resourceful leader was

Nawaz Sharif Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif (Urdu, Punjabi: ; born 25 December 1949) is a Pakistani businessman and politician who has served as the Prime Minister of Pakistan for three non-consecutive terms. He is the longest-serving prime minister of Pak ...

, 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 Mohammad Khan Junejo (Urdu: ; Sindhi: ; 18 August 193216 March 1993) was a Pakistani politician and an agriculturist who served as the tenth prime minister of Pakistan, having elected in this capacity in 1985 until being dismissed in 1988. Junejo ...

. It won only fifty-three seats in the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the rep ...

, compared with ninety-two won by the PPP. Most IJI seats were won in

Punjab Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising a ...

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 A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...

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.

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

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Bibliography

Husain Haqqani Husain Haqqani (; born 1 July 1956, alternately spelled Hussain Haqqani) is a Pakistani journalist, academic, political activist, and former ambassador of Pakistan to Sri Lanka and the United States. Haqqani has written four books on Pakistan, ...

. ''Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military'', Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005.

Controversies

References

Bibliography

See also