Nawaz Sharif pulls out of Pakistan coalition
Updated
Barely a week after Pervez Musharraf resigned as Pakistan's president, the ruling coalition many were hoping would return the country to democratic rule, has collapsed.
Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif has pulled his PML-N party out of government, saying it's failed to restore dozens of judges fired by Mr Musharraf last November - and because there's been no agreement on a neutral replacement for the ousted leader.Mr Sharif's blamed the collapse on the widower of Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali Zardari, and has named a retired judge - Said uz-Zaman Siddiqui - to challenge Mr Zardari in the September the 6th parliamentary elections to choose a new president.
Presenter: Corinne Podger
Speaker: Dr Marvin Weinbaum, Pakistan analyst formerly with the US State Department
PODGER: Last week a day after Mr Musharraf left office Nawaz Sharif threatened to pull out of the coalition if the Supreme Court judges weren't back in their jobs within 72 hours. Asif Zardari responded by having himself named presidential candidate. Are we to believe Mr Sharif didn't see that coming?
WEINBAUM: Well I think he did, clearly this is there's a great deal that's incompatible between these two parties. They were able to agree on the impeachment of Musharraf, but the two other issues, the reinstatement of the Supreme Court justices and who should serve as president obviously were obstacles that they couldn't overcome.
PODGER: Asif Zardari could go to jail if the judges are restored and existing allegations against him end up in court. Is it realistic for Nawaz Sharif to criticise the PPP for breaking its promises on this matter?
WEINBAUM: Well that, you see he wants to take a position as being the principle figure and he wants to portray everyone else as somehow bargaining and compromising. So he's really served his purpose as to sort of stand fast on the principle that Musharraf had to go and the justices had to come back, and that given the powers of the presidency that office should be in the hands of someone who is non-partisan. The idea of having Zardari there with the powers to dismiss the assembly and to pick the army chief, are certainly not anything he could have subscribed to.
PODGER: It's one thing to be principled, it's another to be marginalised? Is Nawaz Sharif playing for the long term do you think?
WEINBAUM: Well he is. I don't think he's marginalised in the sense that he's going to take the opposition. He talks about being constructive opposition but he's going to watch now as these parties scramble to put together a coalition, they're going to be occupied with that. Nobody is going to be minding the store of how you deal with the economy, and there's no coherent policy on the frontier. He's going to stand aside, watch the PPP and its diverse partners, probably he hopes mess things up and then looking to a new election in which he is very confident that he's going to be able to again portray himself as the principled one and controlling the largest of the provinces there, he's going to come to power.
PODGER: Now he said he'll play a constructive role while in opposition. What might that mean?
WEINBAUM: Well it means simply that he's not going to as in the past during the 1990s when one party would consider the other party illegitimate. But I think that that's just verbage now, he's going to be pretty hard one them, he's going to take every opportunity to point out how they are failing to meet what they promised in the way of restoration of the courts and democracy. He will take advantage of this as I say with the thought in mind that by portraying them looking weak and also incompetent that there will be a clamour for a new election, the coalition will fall apart and he will succeed as prime minister.
PODGER: Now the adjectives in the response press this morning are stacking up; turmoil, collapse, upheaval. There had been some hope that President Musharraf's resignation might pave the way for a transition from a presidential democracy to a parliamentary one. Now that the coalition's broken up is it fair to say that hope is dead in the water?
WEINBAUM: Well it's certainly has suffered a tremendous setback because if Zardari is able to put together enough support in the provincial assemblies and the national parliament to get himself elected, at that point it's hard to believe he's going to give up these extraordinary powers that General Musharraf had brought to the office in the last few years. And the idea that somehow the parliament is going to be supreme I think is hard to conceive of and that's a great shame because the country is just crying out for answers to its economic problems, and as I mentioned before some kind of understanding with the military, with the public behind them to address this problem of a challenge that the extremists are making, not just in their support of the insurgency in Afghanistan but also in the way in which they're really challenging the state. They want to bring a very different Islamic agenda to the government in Islamabad.
PODGER: And just briefly Dr Weinbaum how will the collapse of the coalition be viewed from Washington given Islamabad's role in the so-called war on terror?
WEINBAUM: There's mixed feelings here. There is a feeling that Zardari has been saying all the right things, he's declared that the Pakistani Taliban ought to be banned, that certainly sounds good. But there's a real danger there that Washington ought to recognise that. If it throws its mantle over Zardari this could be a replay of what happened with Musharraf where he was then viewed as Washington's man, Washington's instrument and this made him really unable to undertake aggressive policies. He needs popular support and if this is seen as not Pakistan's war but the American war, there's no way that's going to happen.
