Little Eid respite for Musharraf

Islamabad: Pakistan has the next few days off to celebrate the end of Ramadan, but by the middle of this week it should be back to a familiar state of being on the brink of a crisis.

While government offices and financial markets are shut through tomorrow for feasting and gifting during Eid Al Fitr festivities, US ally President Pervez Musharraf is unlikely to be able to escape worries over how to prolong his rule.

Al Qaida wants him dead, Taliban fighters are killing and kidnapping his soldiers, exiled civilian leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif are getting ready to come home and Pakistan's previously docile judges are literally on his case.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will reconvene to consider whether Musharraf, who seized control in a coup eight years ago, is entitled to five more years in power having won an election while still army chief.

On Thursday, potential ally and possible rival Bhutto is due to end more than eight years of self-exile in a homecoming to Karachi that will be fraught with security and legal worries.

The Supreme Court has cast Musharraf's plans for the future in more uncertainty by saying it will hear challenges against the legality of his amnesty to protect Bhutto from graft charges, a move widely regarded as part of a deal for the pair to share power after national elections due in early January.

Booted out again

To add to the mix, Sharif, the prime minister Musharraf ousted, exiled and booted out again in September, when he tried to come back, could attempt to return again, diplomats say.

Authority has ebbed from Musharraf since he unsuccessfully tried to sack Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry last March, prompting lawyers to form a pro-democracy movement to counter what they saw as an attack on the judiciary.

Musharraf, however, insists that his objective is to guide Pakistan towards a fuller democracy.

"We are faced with heightened activity by the forces of extremism and militancy who threaten the very foundations and ideology of Pakistan," Musharraf said in a sombre Eid message to the nation. "They can be countered effectively only through national consensus and political harmony."

Having designated his successor as army chief, Musharraf is ready to become a civilian leader so long as his October 6 election victory is ratified by the Supreme Court. The bench hearing the case has been enlarged to 11 judges.

Many analysts doubt whether the court would dare plunge Pakistan into constitutionally uncharted waters by annulling Musharraf's election and risk provoking the general into declaring a state of emergency or martial law.

"If there is clear judgement disqualifying him from the election, saying that he was not eligible and there is no balancing part of a judgment that allows him to continue, then I think, there will be a serious crisis," said Tanvir Ahmad Khan, a former foreign secretary and columnist for Gulf News.