Zardari and party to fight 'witch-hunt'

Islamabad: President Asif Ali Zardari and his ruling party have thrown down the gauntlet in the face of calls for him to resign, condemning what they called a witch-hunt and vowing to foil conspiracies again them.

Opposition politicians have been calling for Zardari to step down since the Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down an amnesty that protected him, several government ministers and thousands of others from corruption charges.

The political tension comes as the United States has intensified pressure on its nuclear-armed ally to clear out Afghan Taliban enclaves along the Afghan border, while Pakistan is battling its own homegrown militants and their suicide bombers.

Zardari, the widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, met top leaders of his Pakistan People's Party (PPP) on Saturday to draw up a political strategy.

"The PPP will use democracy and constitutionalism as its weapons to fight its adversaries and foil all conspiracies against it," Zardari was later quoted as saying in a statement.

The unpopular Zardari, who is close to the United States, has been dogged by accusations of graft from the 1990s when Bhutto was prime minister.

Never convicted

He says the charges were politically motivated and was never convicted but spent 11 years in prison.

He was covered by the 2007 amnesty which the Supreme Court threw out, but cannot be prosecuted because he is protected by presidential immunity. He has dismissed calls from opposition politicians and hostile sections of the media to step down. Several of his aides and two of his top ministers — Interior Minister Rehman Malek and Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar — were also on a list of people protected by the amnesty, and they too are facing calls to quit.

But Zardari said his party would not be "blackmailed" into asking its ministers to resign on the basis of accusations, the president's spokesman said.

"None of the accusations had been proved during more than a decade of witch-hunting and there is no reason why any one should resign until proved guilty of wrong-doing," the spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, cited Zardari as saying.

The amnesty was introduced by former President Pervez Musharraf as part of a power-sharing deal brokered with Bhutto, with US and British encouragement.

Bhutto returned to Pakistan from self-imposed exile soon after the amnesty was introduced in October 2007, but she was assassinated weeks later while campaigning for a general election she had hoped to win.

Instead, Zardari led her party to victory in the February 2008 polls and became president after Musharraf stepped down later that year, ending nine years of military rule.

No military coup

Zardari has had differences with the army, in particular over a US aid bill that critics said violated Pakistani sovereignty, but analysts have ruled out any chance of a military coup now.

Nevertheless, the military, which runs Pakistan's war against the Taliban and largely sets policy on Afghanistan and old rival India, will be watching closely.

The danger for Zardari, legal experts say, will come from the courts. He is expected to face legal challenges to the legitimacy of his 2008 election as president now that old cases against him have been revived.

"The country's politics is once again entering uncharted waters, with a possible confrontation between the judiciary and the political leadership of the executive looming," the Dawn newspaper said in an editorial yesterday.

Analysts say Zardari could deflect some political pressure by agreeing to the demands of opposition leader Nawaz Sharif to transfer sweeping powers the autocratic Musharraf assumed for the presidency back to the office of the prime minister.

Possible outcomes

Military intervention: The chance of this at this stage is seen as extremely remote. There is no speculation in Pakistan about a military coup despite rumours in foreign exchange markets in Asia early on Friday, apparently sparked when the defence minister was not allowed to leave the country on the orders of the state anti-graft agency.

Resignation: Zardari is not expected to step down any time soon. He is also safe from prosecution because of presidential immunity. Some opposition politicians and sections of the media have been calling on him to resign but he has dismissed the calls.

So what happens next? The latest political troubles will play out in the courts. Four ministers, including the defence and interior ministers could eventually resign but this would not have a big impact on the war on militancy.