ISLAMABAD // Pakistan's coalition government was in danger of falling apart yesterday as a raw power struggle intensified between its two main partners. Underlying tension between government allies has resurfaced only two days after the coalition forced Pervez Musharraf to resign as president by threatening to impeach him.
Mr Musharraf, who was reported by his friends to be in a relaxed frame of mind after playing a game of tennis yesterday, benefited from a dignified departure from power that was orchestrated by his erstwhile ally, Washington, and his former army subordinates. Relations between the coalition partners - the Pakistan People's Party of Asif Ali Zardari and the Pakistan Muslim League-N of Nawaz Sharif - which have been bitter rivals over the past three decades, were less dignified.
Mr Musharraf had little power since he resigned as army chief in November and his political allies lost elections in February. His departure exacerbated the clash between the country's most powerful political parties, who were united solely in the goal of removing their common foe. Pakistanis and Western backers have exhorted the government to move on from squabbling and deal with the country's security and economic problems.
Mr Musharraf's departure marked the start of Pakistan's fourth period of democracy and civilian rule in its 61-year history. No civilian government has ever completed its term in office. In the 1990s, a period described by Mr Musharraf as the "decade of sham democracy", the two parties entered and left government amid a permanent stream of corruption and allegations of sleaze. The current deadlock between the PPP, which had been the party of Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister assassinated in December, and the PML-N, the faction of the PML led by Mr Sharif, another former prime minister, is over the restoration of judges deposed by Mr Musharraf.
Mr Sharif has insisted that the judges and the chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, be restored to office within a week. But Mr Zardari, the PPP's co-chairman, is reluctant to oblige the PML-N because the deposed chief justice might take up challenges to an amnesty from corruption charges granted to him and other party leaders last year. "If they don't settle it [the judges issue] then we could review our strategy and relations with the government. All options will be open to us," said Zafar Iqbal Jhagra, the PML-N's vice president.
Mr Sharif's party, which controls the pivotal province of Punjab, could withdraw from the coalition. However, he has several outstanding objectives he wants to achieve before doing so. He would like to have removed controversial presidential powers that allow the head of state to dissolve parliament. He would also like to repeal the Musharraf-era law barring prime ministers from serving three terms.
If the coalition does collapse, it will not necessarily force an election. The PPP, which has the most seats in parliament, should be able to cobble enough support to remain in government. Yesterday the genesis of a possible future political alignment emerged. Haider Razvi, the leader of the pro-Musharraf Muttahida Qaumi Movement, said the party wanted Mr Zardari to be president. The MQM, a powerful party in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, and in the Sindh province, may provide the PPP with a standby alliance built from Mr Musharraf's supporters and regional parties.
Mr Zardari has not said publicly that he wants the job of president, but privately he has made it clear that he covets the position. If the two main parties manage to agree on the judiciary reinstatement the next challenge for them will be to agree on a candidate for the presidency. Yesterday, Abdul Qayyum, Mr Musharraf's attorney general, resigned from office. His own career history reveals much of Pakistan's political character.
In 1999, during Mr Sharif's tenure, the Lahore High Court convicted Mr Zardari and Bhutto of corruption and fined them US$8 million (Dh29m) and sentenced them to five years in prison. The conviction was overturned because a British newspaper, The Sunday Times, printed transcripts of audio tapes revealing that the judge, Mr Qayyum, took instructions on what verdict to deliver from senior officials in Mr Sharif's government.
Iqbal Akhund, a former diplomat and senior aide to Bhutto, writing on her first government, described the general perception of Mr Zardari as the "one whose baneful influence and insatiable greed, whose activism as 'The First Husband' and interference in administration, led to Benazir's downfall and are the source of all her miseries". Mr Akhund wrote that the army and intelligence agencies remained in control of all major policy issues and that the civilians were neither confident nor strong enough to take on the generals.
Owen Bennett-Jones, an authority on Pakistani history and politics, wrote: "Democracy has few supporters in Pakistan." Mr Bennett-Jones noted striking similarities between the governments of Bhutto and Mr Sharif: neither of them pushed through any significant reforms, both ran up huge levels of foreign debt and both faced corruption cases. Indeed, "Sharif's opulent estate at Raiwind near Lahore and Benazir Bhutto's ancestral home in Larkana in Sindh boast private zoos," he wrote.
In the past, a change in power in Pakistan was usually followed by victimisation and score-settling in the guise of 'accountability'. Officials and politicians were pressed with criminal charges and either jailed or blackmailed into supporting the new power. Pakistanis are waiting to see if the two main political parties have learnt any lessons from the past and whether the civilians can replace military rule with a viable alternative.
@Email:iwilkinson@thenational.ae
