Protests deepen Pakistani turmoil

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

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Anti-government demonstrators attacked banks and shops, torching cars and lawmakers scuffled with police across Pakistan yesterday amid gathering political turmoil triggered by a court ruling barring two opposition leaders from elected office. The conflict comes as Pakistan's pro-Western government faces strong U.S. pressure to crack down on Taliban and al-Qaeda militants and a punishing economic crisis.

Wednesday's Supreme Court rulings upheld an existing ban on the main opposition leader and former Premier Nawaz Sharif from contesting elections because of a criminal conviction related to the 1999 military coup by former President Pervez Musharraf. Sharif’s second term was ended in that ouster. The rulings removed Sharif’s younger brother, Shahbaz, as head of the government in Punjab, Pakistan's richest province. The court decision prevents Sharif from challenging Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in general polls in 2013 and it raised fears of a return to the turbulence of the 1990s, a decade that ended in a military takeover.

’Bogus’ ruling

Sharif, widely considered the country's most popular politician, has accused President Zardari of orchestrating the court decisions and called for mass protests. He told a rally of several thousands supporters near the eastern city of Lahore, the capital of Punjab province and the Sharifs' power-base, that the people rejected the "bogus" court ruling, for which the former premier said Zardari was responsible.

"The decisions of the masses have always been trampled either by judges or dictators," Reuters quoted Sharif as telling the crowd. "Today the decision of the people has to be accepted ... we'll see who dares defy this decision of the people," he added.

Hundreds of Sharif supporters gathered in Rawalpindi, just south of the capital, waving his party's green flags and chanting slogans against the government, reported The Associated Press. Most were peaceful, but some set up barricades of burning tires and used rocks to smash the windows of stores and banks on a main shopping street.

"He has triggered a war which he can't control," Sharif party politician Rana A. Khan told the crowd, referring to Zardari. "We've accepted it as a challenge and will teach him a lesson," he said. PM Yousaf Raza Gilani, a member of Zardari's party, said he was saddened by the ruling. Meanwhile, hundreds of lawyers and Sharif supporters protesting in Multan, another Punjabi city, burned an effigy of Zardari and pulled down posters showing him and slain wife, former leader Benazir Bhutto.

Dozens of judges who were ousted when Musharraf imposed emergency rule in 2007 have returned to the courts under the year-old government led by Zardari's party. But the government has blocked the return of Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, the former chief justice who questioned a pact that quashed long-standing corruption charges against Zardari and Bhutto.

Zardari is unpopular among Pakistanis because of old corruption allegations but he is seen as pro-West. The West is wary of Sharif, who represents the religious conservative mainstream.