Stage set for a presidential contest with PML-N set to name its own candidate against PPP's.
Nawaz Sharif, head of Pakistan’s second-largest party, quit the six-month-old ruling alliance, setting up a fight with Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Asif Ali Zardari over who will replace Pervez Musharraf as president.
“We have been forced to take this decision, which we take with great regret,” Sharif told a news conference in the capital, Islamabad, today after meeting senior party leaders. “Zardari pledged in writing to reinstate the judges within one day of Musharraf leaving,” he said.
Zardari reneged on several pledges to reinstate judges fired by Musharraf and to nominate a presidential candidate from outside the main parties, Sharif said. His party nominated former chief justice Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui to run for head of state in the September 6 presidential election.
Zardari, widower of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, will need support from smaller parties, including the Mutahidda Qaumi Movement, to ensure the majority needed to win the parliamentary vote for president. Sharif’s departure removes an opponent to military action against extremists as the government today banned the Pakistani Taliban after a string of suicide attacks.
Sharif’s withdrawal “won’t cause the government to fall but the PPP will fight for stability because it will be dependent on smaller groups,” said Khalid Mahmud, a research analyst at Institute of Regional Studies in Islamabad. “Even without the support of the Muslim League, the PPP can elect its president.”
The PML-N “won't try to bring down the government,” PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar told GEO TV in a telephone interview. “The coalition was in the interest of the nation.”
The benchmark Karachi Stock Exchange 100 index, which has declined 30 per cent this year, has lost 10.5 per cent in the last four sessions. The rupee, which has shed 24 per cent this year, declined to a record low of 76.68 to the dollar today.
Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam, which backed Musharraf, will announce its presidential candidate today, parliamentary opposition leader Chaudhry Parvez Elahi told reporters in Islamabad.
Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League exited the alliance a week after forcing Musharraf out. Differences between Zardari, 52, and Sharif, 59, have stalled the work of Pakistan’s government as it tries to tackle a slowing economy, faster inflation and increased terrorist violence.
“These repeated defaults and violations have forced us to withdraw our support from the ruling coalition and sit on the opposition benches,” Sharif said. “However, we will play a constructive role.”
PML-N has “laid the foundation for politics of principle and we should all support this,” said Siddiqui, who quit as chief justice when Musharraf seized power in 1999. “Sharif stood by his word in difficult times and we will struggle for the reinstatement of judges.”
Lawyers will stage protest sit-ins in major Pakistani cities on August 28 and demand the government reinstates the judges, Aitzaz Ahsan, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, said in a news conference today. Lawyers will protest in front of the Parliament House in Islamabad on September 4, he said.
“It would have been better if the coalition remained intact,” Zahid Khan, spokesman for the Awami National Party, a coalition partner, said in an interview on GEO TV.
“The country needs the stability more than any other issue.”
The Mutahidda Qaumi Movement, a Karachi-based political party, has announced it will back Zardari as president. Qaumi Movement is the fourth-biggest party with 25 seats in the 342-member National Assembly, or Parliament’s lower house, and has previously supported Musharraf.
Musharraf, 65, resigned on August 18 to avoid facing impeachment for heading the 1999 coup and violating the constitution by firing 60 judges in November.
Sharif wants to reinstate the former chief justice as part of a “vendetta against Musharraf, hoping the judge would have punished the president,” PPP spokeswoman Farzana Raja told ARYONE World TV in an interview.
Sharif, who was ousted as prime minister by Musharraf in a 1999 military coup, had differences with Zardari over replacing Musharraf-appointed judges with the ones the former president fired.
Zardari wants to keep the Musharraf judges, who backed legislation withdrawing corruption charges against him and his wife, while also reinstating the fired ones. Zardari denies the corruption accusations.
