Shaking stability

AP

IT took only minutes for Shahbaz Sharif to step down as the Chief Minister of Pakistans Punjab province after the Supreme Court pronounced his disqualification from public office on February 25. He quietly left his office in Lahore, and its trappings too, and drove away in a personal car to Jati Umrah, the palatial Sharif farmhouse in Raiwind outside the city.

The calm of his departure belied the intensity of the political earthquake that the Supreme Court had set off with its order disqualifying Shahbaz and his brother Nawaz Sharif, leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League (N), from contesting elections or holding public office. Adding insult to injury was the undue haste shown by the federal government run by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in imposing Governor raj in the province without giving the PML(N) time to nominate another Chief Minister and prove its majority on the floor of the Assembly.

The episode has pitted the PML(N) and the PPP once again in a take-no-prisoners political battle, recalling their bitter rivalry in the 1990s when neither side could complete a term in office despite getting the opportunity twice each. Their battle finally culminated in a decade of military rule that the leadership of both parties had to sit out.

The misery of political exile brought Benazir Bhutto, the late PPP leader, and Nawaz Sharif together in April 2006. Their pact, known as the Charter of Democracy and signed fittingly in London, a long-time home to political exiles of all hues, was seen as a historic new beginning in Pakistani politics.

Benazir Bhuttos assassination in December 2007 was a big jolt, but the warm embrace between her husband and successor, Asif Ali Zardari, and the PML(N) leadership appeared to signal that both sides were truly prepared to put the past behind them in the interests of democracy. But that was not to be.

The confrontation began with Zardaris blithe repudiation of an agreement with Sharif to restore the deposed Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhary, to his position in the Supreme Court and to restore all the other judges who had been sacked by Pervez Musharraf when he, as President, imposed the emergency on November 3, 2007.

That saw the PML(N) pull out of the federal government. Even then it was believed that as long as the Sharifs could rule Punjab, the two sides would work out a modus vivendi. But the PPP, which was part of the coalition government in Punjab, appeared to have other ideas.

In Punjab, the charge on the PML(N) was led by Governor Salman Taseer, a media baron who is close to both Musharraf and Zardari and whose appointment was opposed by the PML(N) from day one. From the stately Governors House in Lahore, Taseer kept the Sharifs on tenterhooks from the start. He hobnobbed with the PML(Q), the previous ruling party, and kept up the impression that the PPP could easily form the government with the help of this political legacy of the Musharraf regime.

Simultaneously, the Sharifs found themselves up against a legal onslaught seeking to prevent them from holding office. That battle began during the February 2008 elections when the returning officer rejected the nomination papers of both brothers citing convictions in cases slapped against them by Musharraf back in 2000, within a year after he ousted Nawaz Sharif, then the Prime Minister, in a bloodless military coup.

After the general elections, the Election Commission ruled that both Sharifs could contest the elections. Accordingly, when the by-elections came up in mid-2008, Nawaz Sharif filed his nomination papers for the National Assembly and Shahbaz Sharif for the Punjab Assembly. But a petition in the Lahore High Court challenged the Election Commission decision in the Nawaz Sharif case.

The former Prime Minister refused to appear before the post-November 3, 2007, court. The case was decided against him. Nawaz Sharif refused to go in appeal to the Supreme Court, which he denounced as PCO court after Musharrafs November 2007 provisional constitutional order and to which hand-picked judges took the oath of office after Musharraf purged the rest.

But PML(N)-PPP relations were still cordial enough for the federal government to file a review petition in the Supreme Court, which postponed the election in the constituency until the case was decided. Two lawyers also filed petitions opposing the Lahore High Court verdict.

Meanwhile, a separate petition challenged Shahbaz Sharifs election to the Provincial Assembly and his subsequent taking over as Chief Minister of the PML(N)-PPP coalition government formed in Punjab after the February 2008 elections. This, too, went up to the Supreme Court.

The case in the Supreme Court centred on the argument by the two respondents who had filed the original petition in the Lahore High Court that the presidential pardon given to Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif before they were exiled to Saudi Arabia by the Musharraf regime only extended to the sentence, and did not erase the convictions.

After Nawaz Sharif openly opposed Zardaris decision to bid for the presidency following Musharrafs resignation, the hearings took on added political meaning. As the PML(N) and the PPP drifted apart, Governor Taseer kept up the pressure on the Shahbaz Sharif government even as the legal pressure continued to build up in the Supreme Court. It increasingly seemed that the PPP-led federal government was using the disqualification case as a bargaining chip to get the Sharif brothers to back down from their demand to restore the judges dismissed by Musharraf.

On their part, the Sharifs, too, had been making steady efforts to woo the PML(Q) over to their side even as they threatened the federal government with their support to a long march, from Lahore to Islamabad, called by lawyers agitating for the restoration of the pre-November 3, 2007, judiciary. The Supreme Court decision came exactly two weeks before the scheduled protest on March 12.

In a strictly legal sense, the Supreme Court ruling may not be wrong as there is no doubt that Nawaz Sharif was convicted. But the widespread view is that the court should have had no say at all on this issue, especially as the judgment against Nawaz Sharif is itself seen as dodgy, delivered as it was by a stacked Supreme Court in the immediate aftermath of Musharrafs coup against him.

Legal and constitutional experts believe the PPP government could have found a way out for the Sharifs had it so wished. One suggestion is that Zardari could have brought in an ordinance to wipe out the convictions against the Sharifs, similar to the Musharraf-sponsored National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), which erased all corruption charges against Zardari and his wife, Benazir.

A furious Nawaz Sharif sounded the battle cry immediately after the Supreme Court order. Holding Zardari squarely responsible for the disqualification, he lashed out at him for being a deceitful politician. He accused him of bringing in an ordinance to repeal a Musharraf-era requirement that only graduates could run for office because, as he put, Mr. Zardari is not a graduate.

He accused Zardari of cheating on the promise to restore Chaudhary as the Chief Justice for fear that he would strike down the NRO. He also demanded that the billions of ill-gotten dollars Zardari and Benazir were accused of siphoning away from Pakistan and stashing abroad should be returned to the people of the country to whom it rightfully belongs.

That the gloves were really off became clear when Nawaz Sharif asked government officials, including the police, not to take orders from the Governors new dispensation in Punjab province. Predicting that Chaudhary would be reinstated in the Supreme Court and Shahbaz Sharif as Punjab Chief Minister, he said if any officials were sacked for their refusal to work, they should not worry as it would not be long before their reappointment orders were issued.

The Sharifs have also thrown themselves into the lawyers agitation, and all eyes are now on the long march, which may take a violent turn if the government decides to crack down on it. The lawyers have threatened to stage, at the rallys culmination in Islamabad, an indefinite dharna near the Parliament building until their demand is met. But the question now is whether it will be allowed even to start from Lahore.

In its defence, the PPP has argued that the disqualification was purely the courts decision and any attempt by the government for a pro-Sharif verdict would have amounted to an interference with the independence of the judiciary. There are few takers for this line. In popular perception, the present Supreme Court is anything but independent, headed as it is by another of Musharrafs hand-picked judges after the sacking of Chaudhary.

The impression of mala fide by the PPP deepened with the proclamation of Governors rule in Punjab. The criticism is that the disqualification was a pre-planned and deliberate move by the PPP with a view to ousting the PML(N) government from the politically all-important province and replacing it with one of its own.

One of the strategies of the PML(N) as it prepares for battle has been to make the most of the rifts within the PPP, especially the perceived differences between President Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani. The PML(N) leadership has been at pains to point out that it had no issues with the PPP, but only with Zardari. At one point, Nawaz Sharif even said that the ghost of Musharraf has entered Zardari.

At a parliament session called specifically to discuss the political fallout of the disqualification order, Leader of the Opposition and PML(N) stalwart Nisar Chaudhary accused Zardari of being unfaithful to his late wifes political legacy. PML(N) parliamentarians chanted, Bibi hum sharminda hain, terey qaatil zinda hain (Benazir we are ashamed that your killers are still on the loose), a slogan raised by the PPP until the time Musharraf was the President as an accusation against him.

At the time of writing, efforts were being made for a compromise between the two sides as the conflict between them threatened to turn vicious. Diplomatic efforts were also on for a patch-up. For the rest of the world, this latest episode of instability in Pakistan could not have come at a worse time, with international attention focussed on the governments capacity and energy to battle militancy and extremism. The absence of a national consensus could also affect the governments will to address the Indian demand that Pakistan must root out terrorist infrastructure from its soil. The United States must factor in several political imponderables as it reviews its Afpak the new U.S. shorthand for Afghanistan and Pakistan policy. In fact, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Army Chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani were both in Washington when the political crisis erupted back home.

Reconciliation between the two sides would be in Pakistans interests, but it will happen only if the PPP senses that it cannot form an alternative government in Punjab. Several other possible outcomes are being discussed. One possibility is that Zardari will once again manage to outmanoeuvre Nawaz Sharif. But while he may be able to consolidate his hold on power in the short term, he and the PPP government may grow more unpopular and weaken under the mood of agitation in the country.

Another possibility is that Nawaz Sharif becomes successful in his efforts to oust the PPP-led government. But this may not be possible unless he has the backing of the Pakistan Army. And thirdly, the Army itself may decide that the politicians had their chance, they messed it up, and now it is time for it to take over again.