Pakistan governing coalition close to cracking
Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A day after their unified effort ousted President Pervez Musharraf, the two major parties in the governing coalition fell into disarray Tuesday when they failed to agree on the restoration of the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
The instant deterioration in relations became evident when Nawaz Sharif, the leader of one of the parties, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, walked out of a meeting in Islamabad and headed back to his home in Lahore, a four-hour drive away.
Party members said Sharif had delivered an ultimatum to the senior coalition party, the Pakistan People’s Party, led by Asif Ali Zardari, to consent to the return of the chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, within 72 hours, or Sharif’s party would leave the government. Chaudhry was among some 60 judges suspended by Musharraf last year.
Even by the standards of Pakistan’s volatile political scene, the public discord between the political leaders came as a surprise, politicians said, a sign that opposition to Musharraf may have formed the strongest thread tying them together.
The departure of Sharif ’s party would greatly weaken the government but would not necessarily mean new elections would follow. Still, the situation did not bode well for stability, as Pakistan faces a sharply declining economy and an emboldened Taliban insurgency moving fast past its sanctuaries in the tribal region and reaching into other parts of the country.
In an attack claimed by the Taliban within the tribal region Tuesday, a suicide bomber ripped into the emergency room of the district hospital in Dera Ismail Khan, a town near Waziristan, where the blast killed 25 people and injured 30, said the inspector general of the police in the North-West Frontier province, Malik Naveed Khan. He said some evidence indicated that the suicide bomber had ties to Waziristan, the base of the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud. The rupture in the coalition appeared serious, perhaps fatal, said Arif Nizami, the editor of the daily newspaper The Nation, and a friend of the Sharif family.
Sharif was “unlikely to cave,” Nizami said.
Zardari and Sharif have sharply disagreed over Chaudhry’s reinstatement ever since they became coalition partners.
Sharif based his election campaign earlier this year on the reinstatement of some 60 judges fired by Musharraf, including the independent-minded Chaudhry.
But Zardari has made it clear that he does not want Chaudhry back on the bench. He prefers the chief justice installed by Musharraf after he imposed emergency rule last November, Abdul Hamid Dogar, according to lawyers familiar with Zardari’s thinking.
The lawyers’ movement that grew around Chaudhry as the ultimate anti-Musharraf symbol in Pakistan regards Dogar as an illegal appointee.
Dogar comes from Sindh province, Zardari’s political base, and the two men are friendly.
The basis of Zardari’s opposition to Chaudhry rests with a fear that he might undo an amnesty agreement that absolved Zardari of corruption charges, lawyers said. The amnesty, which applies to bureaucrats and politicians who faced corruption charges, made up part of a package arranged by Musharraf when Zardari returned to Pakistan after the assassination of his wife, the former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, late last year.
Members of the Pakistan Muslim League-N said Zardari, in failing to agree to the reinstatement of Chaudhry, was breaking a written accord made with Sharif 10 days ago.
The attack in Dera Ismail Khan was part of continuing sectarian strife between Sunni and Shiites, according to Khan, the police chief. A Shiite man was killed in the town Tuesday, and as a group of Shiites approached the gates of the emergency room with the body of the dead man, the suicide bomber blew himself up, he said.
Many of the 23 dead were Shiites, Khan said. Two police officers were also killed, he said.
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