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              Pakistani president to be impeached
Thursday, August 7th, 2008
guardian.co.uk | Pakistan’s fragile coalition government today announced plans to impeach President Pervez Musharraf, throwing the country into new political turmoil. Musharraf was today plotting his response with advisers and finally cancelled an on-off trip to the opening ceremony of the Olympic games. Pakistan’s top military commanders also reportedly met today and the reaction of the army - which was, until recently, led by Musharraf - will now be key. The breakthrough for the coalition - which has been able to agree on little since coming to office four months ago - came after three days of talks between the parties that came to power after elections in February, led by Asif Zardari of the Pakistan People’s party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N). “We want to make a new Pakistan,” said Zardari, sitting with his coalition partners at a press conference in Islamabad. “We have the votes and the political will.” The coalition must prove that the president has subverted the constitution or is guilty of gross misconduct. Musharraf’s decision to dismiss the country’s judiciary and suspend the constitution for a six-week period last November may form the basis of the impeachment. But impeachment will not be easy; it requires a two-thirds majority in parliament, and while the elections brought Musharraf’s opponents to power, the numbers are close. The bigger immediate concern is Musharraf’s constitutional power to dismiss the parliament, under a mechanism that was used three times in the 1990s to sack governments. If the president believes that the army is with him, he may be tempted to use this authority. Impeachment has never been used in Pakistan before and there are fears that it could provoke another military intervention. “This decision was taken in haste. They are playing with fire,” said Amin Fahim, an estranged senior member of the PPP. “Every action has a reaction.” The president has repeatedly said he will not allow himself to be forced from power. Earlier this year, Musharraf - whose autobiography is pointedly called In the Line of Fire - warned that “I cannot preside over the downfall of Pakistan”. The Pakistan military has indicated that it wishes to stay out of politics following Musharraf’s decision to give up the job of army chief in November, when he stubbornly clung on to his other role of president. However, it is unclear whether the men in uniform, who have staged multiple coups in Pakistan’s turbulent history, will stand aside while a former army chief is humiliated and dragged out of office. Sharif said today that he was confident that “this is not the Pakistan of the 80s and 90s”. Zardari said that it was the wish of his late wife, Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in December last year, that her death would become “a catalyst of change”. Sharif’s current politics are based on two themes: removing Musharraf and restoring to office the judges he sacked in November. However, many remain sceptical about Zardari’s sincerity about either of those causes. In March Zardari made another dramatic announcement, also sitting alongside Sharif, that he would reinstate the judiciary. After four months in government, those judges remain out of office, and the PPP has come up with a series of reasons why it could not happen yet. However, impeachment is a far more complicated and risky manoeuvre than bringing the judges back. The PPP came to power after months of careful secret negotiations with Musharraf and many believe that it continues to work on the basis of a “deal” that it forged with him. Under that arrangement, dozens of criminal charges against Zardari and Bhutto were dropped. “Asif [Zardari] and Pervez Musharraf are inseparable, for their own self-interest,” said Iqbal Haider, a former law minister under Bhutto’s government of the 1990s. “Impeachment is a device to distract attention from the restoration of the judges.” In the past, Musharraf has enjoyed strong support from Washington, as a major ally in the “war on terror”, which has given Pakistan billions of dollars in military aid. But it is now widely thought that he can no longer rely on the White House to bail him out. Have Your Say: Pakistani president to be impeached Please read our posting guidelines before posting. Alternatively you can discuss this report here. Related News
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