Hopes for a compromise between the Pakistani government and its protesting opponents over the status of sacked judges faded on Saturday with President Asif Ali Zardari refusing to cave in to pressure, a senior government official said. That's certainly unusual.
Lawyers and opposition political activists nationwide planned to march on the capital by Monday to press embattled President Asif Ali Zardari to reinstate judges sacked by ex-military ruler Pervez Musharraf. Their main demand is the reinstatement of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. Zardari refused to reinstate the judge, seeing him as a threat to his own position.
Pakistan police on Saturday erected a tight cordon to block lawyers and activists who defied a ban on protests, vowing to march on Islamabad as part of a mass anti-government rally named "long march."
The planned protests threaten to bring turmoil to nuclear-armed Pakistan as its year-old civilian government struggles to stem surging Islamist militancy and to revive a flagging economy. Some 150 workers of former Prime Minister Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) rallied in the Punjab city of Multan on Saturday, from where they were scheduled to march on the capital.
Defying protest ban
The authorities had outlawed demonstrations in Islamabad and three provinces, and detained hundreds of activists in the worst such crackdown since Zardari replaced Musharraf last September. "We will go with lawyers to Islamabad by any means possible," Maimoona Hashmi, an MP for the party, told reporters.
Sharif demanded that Zardari reinstate judges and end central rule in Punjab, a PML-N stronghold and Pakistan's most populous--and therefore most politically important--province . Police said they would enforce a ban on protests and rallies. "We have to stop the lawyers and others because they are violating the law," senior police official Karamat Ali told AFP.
As lawyers in black suits and political activists marched down a main road outside the Multan high court, waving flags and punching the air, police said they had sealed off all exit routes from the city. "Police have blocked all roads, but we will go to Islamabad in small groups or one by one," bar association general secretary Rana Naveed Akhtar said.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani promoted a compromise package involving concessions to the main opposition party, led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and the judiciary.
Zardari firm thus far
But Zardari, widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has stood firm, at least until after the planned nationwide "long march" on Monday. "From what I know, President Zardari has made it clear: 'I am not going to negotiate under pressure. Sharif has to abandon the long march'," said a senior unnamed government official.
The News newspaper said Zardari had rejected a compromise package backed by the United States and Britain, whose top diplomats have consulted both sides in recent days. Zardari would only consider the reconciliation formula after Monday, when the long march is due to climax with a sit-in outside parliament in Islamabad, the newspaper said.
Pakistan's efforts to eliminate Taliban and al Qaeda enclaves on the Afghan border are vital to U.S. plans to stabilize Afghanistan and defeat al-Qaeda. The last thing the United States wants to see is Pakistan consumed by turmoil.