KARACHI – Pakistani police clashed yesterday with black-suited lawyers and opposition activists after the launch of a cross-country protest rally in defiance of government attempts to stop it.
The so-called “long march” protest for an independent judiciary could destabilise President Asif Ali Zardari’s government at a time when the country faces severe problems from Islamist militants and a sinking economy.
Pakistan is vital to US efforts to stabilise neighbouring Afghanistan and defeat al-Qaeda. The United States would like the country to be more focused on fighting insurgents than on political power plays.
Authorities banned rallies and detained hundreds of political activists on Wednesday.
But yesterday, the year-old civilian coalition government scrambled for a way to avert a showdown and interior ministry chief Rehman Malik said the long march that set out from the cities of Karachi and Quetta would be allowed to go ahead.
“We’ll not stop them, but if someone tries to take the law in his hand I must say in the house that he won’t be allowed,” Mr Malik told the national assembly.
If the crisis gets out of hand, the army, which has ruled for more than half the country’s 61 years of history, could feel compelled to intervene, though analysts have little expectation that Pakistan would revert to military rule now.
Earlier in Karachi, the capital of Sindh province, paramilitary and police ringed the High Court, where lawyers were assembling, stopping their cars and buses from approaching.
Police wielded batons to disperse a crowd of members of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, allied with the lawyers, outside the court.
Undeterred, several hundred lawyers streamed out of the building on foot, where they joined the political activists.
Protesters were later allowed to board buses and cars and head out of the city, but they were stopped on the outskirts, where scuffles broke out and police arrested several leaders including Munir A Malik, a former president of the Supreme Court bar association.
Police said 150 activists had been detained in the city of Hyderabad, to the north of Karachi.
The protesters hope to converge on Islamabad on Monday to demand the reinstatement of former Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. He was dismissed by former president and army chief Pervez Musharraf in 2007.
Mr Zardari has refused to reinstate Mr Chaudhry. Analysts say he fears the judge could nullify an amnesty Mr Musharraf granted Mr Zardari and his late wife, Benazir Bhutto.
Mr Zardari spoke by telephone with the US special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, and Ambassador Anne Patterson for 30 minutes yesterday, his office said. He also spoke with British foreign secretary David Miliband.
Opposition leader and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif has thrown his weight behind the lawyers, putting him into open confrontation with Mr Zardari.
Infuriated by a Supreme Court ruling barring him and his brother from elected office, and by Mr Zardari ejecting his party from power in Punjab province, Mr Sharif has called the protest a defining moment for Pakistan. He also alleges there is a plot to kill him. – (Reuters)