Hope in Pakistan?

Mr Zardari is now licking his wounds, but one hopeful sign is that Gen Kiyani did not lead a coup

The political face-off in Pakistan has ended without boiling over into a full-blown crisis. Given the run-up to Nawaz Sharif’s defiant protest action in the form of a “long march”, this was almost too much to hope for. But whether out of good sense or strong persuasion from the army chief and the United States, President Asif Ali Zardari has backed down, retraced his steps, and thereby created the room for normal, civilian rule once again. However, the action is not over. Mr Sharif now wants to rescind the Constitutional amendment that gives the country’s president extraordinary powers, reduce him to little more than a figurehead, and make the prime minister the real head of government once again. Whether Mr Zardari will allow this to happen remains the key question, because a power tussle is now on, with Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani emerging stronger than before—in part because he teamed up with the army chief, Gen Ashfaq Kiyani, to defuse the crisis.

Mr Zardari has only himself to blame for his troubles, and for finding himself isolated. Having teamed up with Mr Sharif’s Muslim League (N) immediately after the elections (this proved to be a very short-lived rapprochement), and having agreed on a common plan of action (including the re-instatement of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Chaudhry, whom President Musharraf had dismissed), Mr Zardari over-played his hand in not making the promised change, and then using a court ruling to try and end the political careers of both Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz (who was chief minister of Punjab, which is Pakistan’s most populous state). Pushed into a corner, the Sharif brothers had no choice other than to fight back; and given their control of Punjab it was easy to see that things would boil over in Lahore.

Mr Zardari is now licking his wounds, but one hopeful sign is that, although the politicians have made a hash of things in many ways in the last one year, Gen Kiyani did not lead a coup to take the country back to military rule. The second hopeful sign, again in the context of the country’s democratic future, is that Pakistan’s lawyers fought a sustained two-year battle, through many ups and downs, in order to get the dismissed chief justice re-instated. This will certainly encourage a more independent judiciary, and also serve notice to the country’s rulers (whether they be civilian or military) that the courts are not to be trifled with. Although there is some nervousness created by the unpredictable Mr Chaudhry being back in court, it is through civil society action of the kind the lawyers initiated that a system’s institutional structures get legitimised and strengthened.

None of this is to argue that Pakistan has suddenly ceased to face existential questions. Even if the country goes back to routinely rambunctious politics (and no one knows how the move to disempower the president will work), many challenges lie ahead, chiefly in the fight to save the country from a radical, Islamist fringe that has moved to seize a part of the North-West Frontier Province, and to strike at the two cities that hold the keys to the country’s politics—Karachi and Lahore. A critical question is whether the country’s leading politicians can rise above themselves and take the country down a new road, away from radical Islamism. From India’s perspective, the survival of civilian rule will be viewed with some relief, but that is not an end in itself.