/ 26 February 2009

Pakistan braced for street protests after Sharif ban

Pakistan braced on Thursday for a new wave of street protests after a court barred the country's main opposition leader from running for office.

Pakistan braced on Thursday for a new wave of street protests in a showdown with President Asif Ali Zardari after a court barred the country’s main opposition leader from running for office.

Lawyers and opposition activists called for protests to condemn the court ruling which, as well as banning former premier Nawaz Sharif, also threw his brother, Shahbaz, out of his post as chief minister of Punjab province.

Zardari and Nawaz Sharif are bitter rivals who have long locked horns over the future of the nuclear-armed nation, a vital United States ally in the fight against Taliban and al-Qaeda militancy.

Analysts say Pakistan, reeling from extremist attacks that have killed more than 1 600 people in less than two years, can ill afford a showdown.

The trigger for the latest row was a Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday that rejected an appeal that would have allowed the Sharif brothers to hold public office.

“Now the case has come to the court of the 160-million people of Pakistan,” the former premier told a news conference in a call for action.

“I think the nation will have to rise against such actions. I assure the nation [that] if they back us, we will establish a democratic set-up in this country,” he added.

“I don’t believe in violence and do not want any destruction but if people want to express their feelings against this decision, who can stop them?”

Sharif (59) has re-emerged as a key player in Pakistani politics since he returned after seven years in exile in Saudi Arabia, and has been campaigning to reinstate constitutional court judges sacked when former president Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule in 2007.

His conservative Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) — the country’s second biggest party — refuses to recognise any judge appointed by Musharraf under the emergency.

Rallies have been called in Sharif’s powerbase in Lahore, cities across the country and Pakistan’s political heartland in the central Punjab province.

Pakistani lawyers, who protest every Thursday demanding Zardari reinstate constitutional courts, have called two days of protests.

Anwar Kamal, president of the Lahore High Court Bar Association, said that lawyers will rally in major cities, and that Punjab lawyers will boycott courts on Thursday and Friday.

Other opposition politicians also vowed to join protests.

Liaqat Baloch, leader of Jamaat-i-Islami, the major Muslim fundamentalist party, said its supporters would join the lawyers’ rallies on Thursday.

Burning tyres
Hundreds of protesters took to the streets on Wednesday, burning tyres and tearing down pictures of the president, while the country’s stock market lost 5% in its worst single-day performance of the year.

The government enforced governor’s rule in Punjab — bringing it under the direct control of Islamabad — and the regional parliament was suspended.

Provincial governor Salman Taseer, a member of Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), took over the powers of chief minister.

But in an apparant defiance, PML-N deputies gathered in the Punjab Assembly building for an “emergency session”, deputy speaker Rana Mashud said.

PPP members did not attend the meeting where lawmakers chanted “Go Zardari, go.”

The Supreme Court ruling followed a court verdict in Lahore last June that Nawaz Sharif was ineligible to stand in a by-election.

It followed an earlier conviction over the 1999 “hijacking” of an airliner carrying Musharraf, Pakistan’s then-army chief.

Sharif, who was prime minister at the time, denied it landing rights, but Musharraf landed anyway and led the coup which toppled him.

Sharif’s two terms as prime minister in the 1990s were marred by corruption claims, and he also worried Pakistan’s Western allies by seeking to introduce Islamic Sharia law.

As for Zardari, his popularity is at rock bottom since becoming leader of the PPP after his wife Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007. — AFP