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'Long marchers' defy shaky Zardari in Pakistan
The Australian - March 13, 2009
Amanda Hodge – Pakistan's democratically elected Government showed signs of imploding yesterday as lawyers and opposition supporters defied a security crackdown and threats of further mass arrests to begin a "long march" into the capital.
As the wave of political detentions continued yesterday, with some reports suggesting more than 400 lawyers and activists had been arrested, former prime minister and opposition Pakistan Muslim League (N) leader Nawaz Sharif raised the stakes in his political battle with President Asif Ali Zardari, accusing the Government of plotting his assassination.
Mr Sharif, who continued to evade house arrest yesterday despite a government order for his detention, told Britain's The Guardian newspaper he had credible information that "certain top-most people in the Government" were planning to kill him.
He also accused Mr Zardari of ruling under a cloak of democracy while making policy that could only benefit extremist elements. "In the garb of democracy we are, frankly, under dictatorial rule," Mr Sharif said.
Pakistani media, citing security agency sources, said as many as 30 opposition leaders, including Mr Sharif and cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan – said to be in hiding – would be placed under house arrest today.
Police in Karachi baton-charged hundreds of protesters yesterday as they defied a ban on public demonstrations to gather outside the high court in preparation for the march on the capital. They are demanding reinstatement of former Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, and several other judges, sacked during former president Pervez Musharraf's declared state of emergency in November 2007.
Authorities in the provinces of Sindh and Punjab, which include the major cities of Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, have imposed a ban on all public gatherings and protests. Under the draconian constitutional provision known as section 144, anyone breaching that law can be imprisoned for three months.
But lawyers and PML(N) officials vowed to continue on regardless. "It's now a battle of nerves," Supreme Court Bar Association president and protest organiser Ali Ahmed Kurd said yesterday. "They're trying to make us scared by such tactics. Let's see who wins this battle."
Information Minister Sherry Rehman told reporters the rallies were banned to "avoid bloodshed in the streets", but human rights activists and even former party loyalists have condemned the Government's crackdown as anti-democratic.
"I say it with a very heavy heart that the Government is following the same policies that were carried out by General Musharraf," Iqbal Haider, the chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and a party loyalist under assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, said.
Western diplomats have reportedly spent the past few days in meetings with Pakistani government and opposition leaders, trying to end hostilities between the erstwhile political allies.
Mr Zardari, widower of Bhutto, who was assassinated in December 2007, reportedly held emergency meetings with his Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, and army chief Ashfaq Kayani late on Wednesday night on his return from a brief visit to Iran amid escalating rumours of an imminent military coup. The meeting followed reports Mr Gilani held talks with General Kayani while Mr Zardari was out of the country.
The Pakistani Prime Minister has sought to distance himself in recent days from the Government's decision to impose presidential rule in Punjab, the political stronghold of Mr Sharif and his brother Shahbaz, in the wake of last month's Supreme Court ruling that banned the two brothers from holding office. Shahbaz Sharif was immediately forced out as chief minister of Punjab.
Ominously, the Government also appears to be losing the support of provincial police forces.
The PML (N) claimed yesterday that four local Lahore police chiefs were dismissed on Wednesday for alerting party workers to hide, and that across Punjab 22 police chiefs considered loyal to the Sharifs had been replaced by officers loyal to Mr Zardari's ruling Pakistan People's Party.
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