Pak ruling coalition close to collapse

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Pakistan’s coalition government was close to collapse yesterday after former premier Nawaz Sharif threatened to quit if judges sacked by ousted president Pervez Musharraf are not restored.

With a double suicide bombing outside Pakistan’s main military arms factory highlighting the government’s need to start tackling the country’s problems, Sharif’s warning plunged the alliance into further chaos.

It came a day before the leaders of the coalition that won elections in February, headed by the party of slain ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto, were to hold last-ditch talks on the issue.

But in a sign that Bhutto’s party is seeking to move forward on its own, MPs backed her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, to replace Musharraf as president of the nuclear-armed Islamic republic.

“If the judges are not restored we will perhaps be forced to sit in the opposition,” Sharif said in an interview published in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

“We will not try to bring the government down. But of course then we have no choice but to sit in the opposition.”

Musharraf stepped down on Monday in the face of coalition threats to impeach him over constitutional violations, including his ousting of dozens of senior judges in order to push through his re-election in November.

Western countries who count on Pakistan as a frontline ally in the US-led “war on terror” have called for stability in the wake of his departure.

But the country’s continuing volatility was apparent again on Thursday when 57 people were killed when two bombers blew themselves up at the gates of a major defence industry complex in Wah, near Islamabad.

The issue of the judiciary has hamstrung the coalition since it reneged on its earlier agreement in May to reinstate nearly 60 high court and supreme court judges including chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

Sharif, who was ousted from power by Musharraf in 1999, said that Zardari had talked about restoring judges but not the independent-minded Chaudhry — something Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party has denied.

He said Zardari had assured him that the judges would be restored within 24 hours of removing Musharraf.

Education minister Ahsan Iqbal, a key member of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N, said that the PPP had to take a decision by Friday.

“If this agreement is not fulfilled, then how can we justify staying in the coalition?” Iqbal told AFP.

Lawmakers from Bhutto’s party meanwhile asked Zardari to run for president, voicing their support at a dinner he hosted Wednesday at his Islamabad residence, Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar said.

“Members belonging to our party in the parliament asked Asif to become the next president,” Mukhtar told AFP. “He is the most deserving candidate for this post.”

It was not immediately clear whether Zardari, who had previously denied having any ambition for the presidency, would choose to run.

Mukhtar said the party’s executive committee would make a final decision on its choice of candidate at a meeting Friday in Islamabad.

Separately the PPP’s wing in Punjab province, the country’s most populous and influential region, said they also backed Zardari for the top spot.

“The provincial leaders unanimously recommended to the central executive committee that it should declare Zardari as the party candidate for the office of the president,” Punjab governor Salman Taseer said.

Sharif’s party said Zardari’s name had been proposed without their blessing.

“There was an understanding between the coalition partners that the presidential candidate would be decided by mutual consensus,” Iqbal said.

“They have unilaterally floated the name of Mr Zardari — it is their prerogative, but we have not been consulted yet,” he added.

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