Pakistani lawyers and opposition parties prepared to launch a cross-country protest on Thursday, heading for a showdown with the government which has banned rallies and detained hundreds of activists.
The so-called long march to press for an independent judiciary could destabilise the civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari at a time when key US ally Pakistan faces severe problems from Islamist militants and a sinking economy.
Protesters’ convoys of cars and buses were due to gather in the southern provinces of Sindh and Baluchistan and then set off for Islamabad, despite a crackdown on Wednesday in which 300 opposition party activists were detained.
But in Karachi, the capital of Sindh province, paramilitary soldiers and police ringed the High Court where lawyers were assembling, witnesses said.
”Our buses are not being allowed in so we intend to walk,” Munir A Malik, a former president of the Supreme Court bar association and a protest organiser, told Reuters by telephone.
”If they want to arrest us, it’s their option but we’ll take the first step,” he said from the High Court.
Lawyers were also gathering in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan, a witness said.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan is vital to US efforts to stabilise neighbouring Afghanistan and defeat al-Qaeda. The US wants to see it focus on fighting militancy rather than getting diverted by political turmoil.
Concerns of violence
The protesters were expected to converge on Islamabad on Monday to demand the reinstatement of former Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, dismissed by former president and army chief Pervez Musharraf in 2007.
The protest organisers plan a sit-in outside Parliament, although the government has said the rally will not be allowed in the city centre.
Zardari has refused to reinstate the judge. Analysts say he fears Chaudhry could nullify an amnesty Musharraf granted Zardari and his late wife, Benazir Bhutto.
His main rival, opposition leader and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, has thrown his weight behind the lawyers, putting him into open confrontation with Zardari.
Sharif, who is also infuriated by a Supreme Court ruling which barred him and his brother from office, and which he blamed on Zardari, called the protest a defining moment for Pakistan.
The government has threatened to prosecute Sharif for sedition if violence erupts during the long march.
If the crisis becomes acute, the military, which has ruled for more than half the country’s 61 years of history, could feel forced to step in.
Top US and British diplomats have been meeting all sides in recent days in an effort to work out a compromise.
”Our biggest concern, of course, is that the situation become violent and then start to spiral downward,” said a US official in Washington who declined to be identified.
”What we are trying to do is head that kind of thing off.”
The US called for restraint and urged all sides to avoid violence and respect the rule of law, a US embassy spokesperson said.
Worry about political turmoil has weighed on financial markets in recent days but the main stock index opened higher and the rupee was flat. — Reuters