PAKISTAN WAS plunged into fresh turmoil yesterday after opposition leader Nawaz Sharif was disqualified from office, provoking a political crisis even as the country struggles to challenge Islamist extremism.
The supreme court ruling against Mr Sharif promises an all-out confrontation between his party and the government in Islamabad, which he blamed for the verdict, and threatens to paralyse governance just as Islamabad is coming under pressure from the West to act against militants.
Angry demonstrations broke out across Punjab province, which had been ruled by Mr Sharif’s party, with tyres set ablaze and posters of Pakistani president Asif Zardari torn down and burned.
Analysts said conflict between Mr Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League and Mr Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party threatened the country’s fragile democracy by replaying the 1990s, when the two parties repeatedly toppled each other’s governments, culminating in a coup in 1999. “The future of democracy will be in serious question,” said political analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi. “The [Islamabad] government will find it difficult to cope with governance because political survival will be the main consideration for them.”
The court ruled that Mr Sharif, a former prime minister, could not stand for parliament as a result of an old criminal conviction. It also disqualified his brother, Shahbaz, who was head of the provincial government in Punjab, Pakistan’s richest and most populous province, forcing him to step down immediately. “The nation should rise against this unconstitutional decision,” Mr Sharif told reporters in Lahore. “People can work out for themselves whether this was the judges’ decision or Zardari’s.”
Mr Zardari immediately imposed emergency rule in Punjab for two months.
His party will now try to garner enough support in the provincial parliament to form its own government there. – ( Guardianservice)