Posted on 08/25/2008 3:23:00 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Pakistan's former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, withdrew his party from the coalition government on Monday, raising the stakes in a bitter political confrontation as the country struggles to combat pro-Taliban militancy.
Mr Sharif ended the country's shaky period of "reconciliation" exactly one week after the two main coalition partners achieved their common goal of forcing Pervez Musharraf to resign as president.
Mr Sharif accused the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) of failing to honour pledges to reinstate judges sacked by Mr Musharraf.
"We therefore feel that these repeated defaults and violations have forced us to withdraw our support from the ruling coalition and sit on the opposition benches," Mr Sharif told a news conference.
The PPP was reluctant to restore judges partly because of concern the deposed chief justice might rescind an amnesty on corruption charges granted to its leadership last year.
The withdrawal of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) from the five- month old coalition - dubbed the "collision government" by the media - will not immediately force an election but Mr Sharif is expected to hobble the government by agitating for early elections. Aides for Mr Sharif and the PPP's presidential candidate, Asif Ali Zardari, were on Monday dusting off files on their bosses' rivals.
The two parties, which were archrivals in the 1990s, are set for an immediate bruising, muck-raking battle in the run up to presidential elections on Sept 6.
Mr Zardari, the widower of the former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, is a controversial candidate as he was tainted by corruption scandals during his wife's two governments. He was never convicted.
However since his party won elections in February, Mr Zardari has courted Pakistan's twin fonts of power, America and the army, by issuing strong statements against pro-Taliban militants and voicing support for military operations against them.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Going to get even more dicey there.
The military will probably take over again. Didn’t the Pakistani army replace Musharraf with a more pro-US leader, a colleague of Benazir Bhutto?
gitmo
I thought that the govt would last a little longer.
Sharif pulled out, one reason may be that he wanted the judges Mush sacked reinstated, but Zardari may be a little leery of allowing judges who may go after him for corruption back onto the bench.
Also, could signal a Saudi move since Sharif is far more proSaudi than Zardari, for whom, BTW, the murder of his wife have proven rather beneficial.
Will Gen Kiyani step up? Or will the Jihadis?
Look for Kashmir to flare up, IMO, the traditional sop to the Pakistani military.
The military has been running Pakistan since independence.
yitbos
Will they divide up Pakistan’s nukes on ethnic lines?
Ah, nothing like the smell of a faiing state in the morning!
What a crap hole.
>>fractures along ethnic lines.
The Army is primarily composed of Punjabis, Pathans and a few like Musharraf, called Mohajirs, those Muslims who came from Central India to Pakistan after Partition.
As a rule, the other ethnic minorities, the Baluchis and the Sindhis are woefully underrepresented in the Army along with the Kashmiris, who are used as jihad fodder and sent across the border into India.
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