Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Wednesday banned the country’s top opposition leader Nawaz Sharif from holding elected office, a move that triggered street protests in country’s largest province of Punjab.
A spokesperson for the former two-time premier rejected the verdict as ”undemocratic, unconstitutional and illegal”.
”We will hold countrywide protests against the verdict,” Pervez Rashid said.
Thousands of Sharif’s supporters took to the streets and blocked the roads with burning tyres in almost every main town in Punjab, the stronghold of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
The angry crowds chanted slogans against President Asif Ali Zardari and tore down his posters. Some stick-wielding angry protesters damaged vehicles and forced markets to close.
Pakistani stocks tumbled following the court decision, with the benchmark Karachi Stock Exchange 100 index losing about 5% by midday due to political uncertainties.
The court ruling also nullified last year’s election of Sharif’s brother Shahbaz Sharif, removing him from the office of the chief minister Punjab, home to more than 60% of the population.
The verdict came as the rift between Sharif and Zardari widened, two traditional rivals who formed a coalition government after the February 2008 general elections that defeated former president Pervez Musharraf.
Sharif is the most popular leader in Pakistan and his party has the power the destabilise Zardari’s government which is struggling against rising Islamic militancy in the north-western part of country where Taliban have gained control over large areas.
”We see a major political upheaval, particularly in Punjab, that is already in the making,” said political analyst Rasool Bux Raees. ”The political situation in the country looks bleak in the coming months.”
He said the development was also going to effect at least to some extent Pakistan’s struggle against Islamic militancy.
”The government which is already very weak has opened a new front, which will divert its attention away from the fight against terrorism. Besides, it also lost a chance to unite the nation against the extremists, who will benefit from this political divide,” Bux added.
Sharif’s PML-N party regards the sitting top judges as ”hand-picked” by Musharraf after he deposed independent-minded chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry in November 2007, when the court was about to rule against his re-election.
The PML-N supports lawyers calling for Chaudhry’s reinstatement, and it pulled out of the coalition in the wake of Zardari’s hesitance to reverse Musharraf’s decision.
Sharif was convicted on several charges after his government was toppled in 1999 by then-army chief Musharraf in a military coup. He was pardoned later but exiled only to return after more than seven years just prior to last year’s elections.
A three-member bench of Lahore High Court barred Sharif from contesting elections last year on the basis that he was pardoned but that the convictions still stood. The Wednesday ruling by the Supreme Court upheld that decision.
”These are kangaroo courts and we don’t care. The decision has no value to the people of Pakistan, the real jurists,” said PML-N spokesperson Siddiqul Farooq.
He said the party has isssued a call for countrywide protests on Thursday. — Sapa-dpa