World | Pakistan
Focus on army as coalition moves to impeach president
All eyes are on the army as the ruling coalition moves to impeach the president, who is a former army chief.
- By Shahid Hussain, Correspondent
- Published: 00:01 August 9, 2008
Islamabad: All eyes are on the army as the ruling coalition moves to impeach the president, who is a former army chief.
Though President Pervez Musharraf has yet to make any public response to the Pakistan Peoples Party-led alliance's move, the president's political allies have vowed to fight the ouster move.
A session of the National Assembly, Pakistan's lower house of parliament, has been called for Monday, which happens to be Musharraf's 65th birthday, to table the impeachment motion.
The prospects of the nuclear-armed Muslim country that is also a hiding place for Al Qaida leaders lurching into a fresh bout of instability will be viewed with trepidation by the United States and other Western nations, and regional neighbours.
A two-day meeting of the army's top brass at headquarters in Rawalpindi, the city next door to Islamabad, ended yesterday with a statement mainly about promotions which made no mention of the political crisis. The focus is now on the man to whom Musharraf passed command of the army when he retired from the military in November.
"The fate of Musharraf now lies in the hands of Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Kiyani," said analyst Lisa Curtis in a commentary for the Washington-based Heritage Foundation.
Switch
Although Kiyani had been Musharraf's intelligence chief, civilian politicians have been encouraged by his efforts to withdraw the army from political affairs.
While the army had accepted a switch to civilian rule which began with the defeat of pro-Musharraf parties in an election on February 18, it was supposed to be a transition, and the generals could react badly to any humiliation of their former chief.
Speaking to news channels yesterday, a leading member of the coalition, Nisar Ali Khan expressed optimism that Kiyani would not let the army "meddle in politics".
Despite the uncertainty, investors in a share market that has lost 38 per cent after peaking on April 21, recovered some nerve yesterday as the main index rose 2 per cent. The rupee at 72.60/70 to the dollar was a brushing all-time lows struck a month ago.
Politicians and analysts believe the generals will want to watch how the situation unfolds.
"They will have their concerns, but having concerns is one thing and sending in the tanks is quite another," said Ayaz Amir, an anti-Musharraf politician in the National Assembly, and a former army major.
The coalition led by the Pakistan Peoples Party announced on Thursday it would impeach the president and re-seat the judges.
According to a declaration Zardari made, the judges were to be restored through a National Assembly resolution and an executive order.
Supreme Court Bar Association president Aitzaz Ahsan said the people would be disappointed if the impeachment motion caused a delay in the reinstatement of the judges. He reiterated lawyers' plan to launch a forceful campaign if the judges were not restored by August 14.
Musharraf, who abandoned his scheduled trip to Beijing Olympics opening ceremony due to the threat to his political fate, was busy consulting his legal and political aides on how to face the challenge, sources said.
Maverick leader
Leaders of former ruling PML-Q party once again vowed to defend Musharraf but it remained unclear whether the former army chief would appear before the parliament to rebut the charges when a joint sitting is convened.
Opponents have flayed Musharraf for ignoring a constitutional requirement for president to address a new parliament. "He does not have the courage to face the elected representatives," Nisar Ali Khan said.
Coalition leaders were confident Musharraf could not resort to presidential authority under an article of the constitution to dissolve the assemblies, while his loyalists said he could do so.
Amid rising political temperature, a maverick figure from the PML-Q Senator Nilofar Bakhtiyar proposed talks between the coalition and Musharraf to convince the president to resign. "As the country is facing a critical situation, it would be inappropriate to impeach the president," said Bakhtiyar, who leads a PML-Q bloc of seven senators.
She said her group would soon decide whether or not to support the impeachment move.
"We are seven senators in the group and would decide a joint course over the issue soon," she added.
Information Minister Sherry Rehman said that the impeachment would be a "historic moment for democracy in Pakistan".
"It is a step towards democracy and parliamentary sovereignty. We are just implementing the mandate given to us by the public on February 18," said the minister, while talking to a private television channel.
The minister said the coalition had done its homework and it had the required numbers in a joint session of the two houses to impeach Mushrraf.
- With inputs from Reuters
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