PAKISTAN’S government agreed late last night to reinstate Iftikhar Chaudhry as chief justice to defuse a political crisis and end street agitation that threatened to turn into violent confrontation, officials said.
“Chaudhry will be restored, and there will also be a constitutional package,” a government official with knowledge of the deal told reporters.
The political crisis gripping the Muslim nation has alarmed the United States and Britain, which fear any slide into chaos would help the Taliban and al-Qaeda become stronger in Pakistan.
Western diplomats have tried to make President Asif Ali Zardari pull out of a collision that could destabilise the year-old civilian coalition and force a reluctant army chief, Gen Ashfaq Kayani, to intervene.
Mr Sharif, a two-time prime minister with a conservative, religious nationalist support base in the key central province of Punjab, had backed a lawyers’ movement fighting for the independence of the judiciary.
A senior leader in Mr Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N) party confirmed the breakthrough.
“The message we got [is] that the government has decided to restore [the chief justice] Chaudhry and they are going to announce it shortly,” Khawaja Asif said.
“There will be a very comprehensive package,” he said.
The government had been offering some concessions, but Mr Sharif refused to accept anything less than Mr Chaudhry’s restoration.
Mr Zardari finally conceded as the opposition leader and the lawyers held a day of protest in Lahore yesterday, and set off for Islamabad for the climax of a series of protests they had dubbed “the Long March”.
To stop them driving into Islamabad, authorities positioned containers and trucks across roads outside the capital.
Paramilitary troops are camped in a city sports complex and deployed at entry points, while, officials say, the army has been put on standby.
Yesterday, in a worrying prelude to the confrontation, riots broke out in Lahore.
Mr Chaudhry was dismissed in late 2007 as supreme court chief justice by the then president and army chief, Gen Pervez Musharraf.
President Zardari had feared the judge could wage a vendetta against Mr Musharraf that could also threaten his own position.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani was due to address the nation on state-run television shortly.
The crisis began when Mr Zardari ejected the PML-N from power in Punjab last month, after the Supreme Court barred Mr Sharif and his younger brother Shahbaz from holding elected office.
Many observers suspect Mr Zardari fears the judges could challenge a pact that quashed long-standing corruption charges against him and his wife, slain former leader Benazir Bhutto.
However, there are signs are that the badly shaken Zardari government was influenced in part by pressure from the US and Britain.
“I’m seeing a soft revolution happening in Pakistan,” said Imran Khan, the former cricketer turned politician, who is a leader of the pro-judiciary movement.
“This is the first time you’re seeing the public mobilised. When a supposedly democratic government used the law to quash a peaceful demonstration, we saw the reaction of the people. The more the police attacked them, the more the crowd swelled up.
“God willing, this will be a soft revolution, rather than the sort of revolution that could come if we fail.”
Mr Khan is in hiding, though speaking to the media by phone, and plans to emerge today, at the climax of the “long march”.
There has been a frantic, behind-the-scenes, intervention by the US and Britain, to try to pressure Mr Sharif and Mr Zardari’s government to a political settlement.
The west is concerned that key ally Pakistan is heading towards political collapse, having only restored democracy a year ago.– (Reuters, Guardianservice)