The uncertainty of how the ongoing long march will end revives memories of similar protest launched by Benazin Bhutto in 1993 that contributed massively to the ouster of then prime minister Nawaz Sharif and president Ghulam Ishaq Khan (GIK), courtesy of the Pakistan Army. After the ertswhile government suppressed her first long march, Bhutto had announced to hold another, but the army intervened and she was flown into the General Headquarters Rawalpindi in a military helicopter from another city in July 1993 for a deal. After the agreement, she abandoned the second long march. The third long march, announced by Bhutto to be held on Nov 13, 2007 against then president Pervez Musharraf demanding reinstatement of the deposed judges and lifting of emergency rule, turned out to be a mere threat and pressure tactic. There is a striking similarity in the present long march and the one threatened by Benazir Bhutto in 2007 in the context of their demand - the reinstatement of the deposed judges being the same. Her Pakistan Peoples Party's (PPP) government helds a totally different view on the judges return, conflicting with her unambiguous stand. Some six weeks after her abortive long march in 1993, the thoroughly non-political army chief, General Waheed Kakar, brokered a deal, breaking the empasse between Nawaz Sharif and GIK, leading to the ouster of both. Benazir Bhutto won the subsequent parliamentary elections held after their resignation. The stage was set for this objective to achieve. While several PPP leaders and activists were arrested all over Pakistan to thwart the 1993 long march, Benazir Bhutto, accompanied by hundreds of her party leaders and workers, tried to take out a procession from her F-8 Islamabad residence, but the police stopped her by tear-gassing and baton-charging her group. She could not reach the designated place of holding a public meeting in Rawalpindi's Liaquat Bagh. It was during this protest that a police stick hit Farooq Legharis head. In the opinion of several people, the poise and confidence being consistently exuded by Nawaz Sharif about the positive result of his present protest from the first day of its launch amply demonstrates that he is hundred percent sure that he is going to win. An important dissimilarity between Bhutto's long march, including those that materialized and which didn't, and the present one is that the latter has primarily been sponsored by the lawyers community while Nawaz Sharif is adding the real weight, whereas her PPP had sponsored the previous protests. The nationwide repressive tactics employed by the present administration are no different from what was in sight in 1993. Detention of hundreds of political leaders and activists has become a routine to foil such protests. Against the policies of the Benazir Bhutto government, Nawaz Sharif had also launched a Tehrik-e-Nijat (movement for deliverance) and embarked on a protest train journey from Lahore to Peshawar. However, her regime had not instantly fallen as it happened in 1993 in the case of the mutually destructive Nawaz Sharif
