I finally got around to reading the full text of a speech by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte to the National Endowment for Democracy’s Pakistan Forum earlier this month and the following exchange caught my eye:

Question: “Does the Bush Administration still consider President Musharraf an indispensable ally?”

Negroponte: “Well, first of all, I think what you — your first question is prompted by the fact that at times in the past, when we talked about the war on terror, particularly in the wake of 9/11, we personalized the characterization of Pakistan’s collaboration with us by saying that Mr. Musharraf was an indispensable ally in the war on terror. And I myself used that phrase on a number of occasions.

“But it really is shorthand for the nation of Pakistan and it’s a shorthand for saying that we have an — I mean, Pakistan is in an indispensable situation in terms of dealing with the threats we confront in the war on terror because of the border area, because of al Qaeda, because of the position that this whole al Qaeda threat poses to our interests, the interests of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the rest of the world. So I think that’s — that would be what I’d say to that one.”

Am I alone in thinking that “shorthand” is an extraordinary word for the Americans to use about Musharraf? The reference is all the more interesting in the context of speculation on whether the rift between former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Pakistan People’s Party leader Asif Ali Zardari will take pressure off Musharraf to quit.  

The Washington Post, in an article headlined “Sidelined Musharraf Still Exerts Influence“, says that the former army general has continued to influence the country from the shadows, even after his political allies were trounced in elections in February.

“In the past week, the coalition’s acrimonious split — over how and when to restore judges fired by Musharraf — has dashed some of the hopes for democratic progress generated by elections in February,” it says. “Just as swiftly, it has generated talk of Musharraf as the political beneficiary, chortling at his adversaries’ failures and sensing a chance for political muscle-flexing if not rehabilitation.”

An analysis in the Daily Times, however,  suggests the row over the judiciary could produce a backlash against Musharraf, particularly given a pledge by the lawyers’ movement to hold a major protest on June 10 to champion the restoration of the judges. The backlash would also hit Zardari, accused by some of his critics of bowing to American pressure and resisting demands by Sharif that Musharraf be forced out of office. 

“The lawyers and many civil society groups are expected to start street protests for the restoration of the judges. Several political parties are also expected to join them,” writes Hasan-Askari Rizvi in the Daily Times. “The PML-N (Sharif’s party) will certainly not hold back because such a situation would strengthen its position. The movement will target the government, especially Musharraf, and Asif Ali Zardari.”

It looks like volatile times ahead in Pakistan.
 

The split in Pakistan’s ruling coalition could provide a lifeline for President Pervez Musharraf that the Pakistani people believed they’d yanked away in an election three months ago. 

After the Feb.18 poll demolished Musharraf’s parliamentary support, predictions abounded that the politically isolated U.S. ally would be forced from power within weeks or months. Politicians had even talked about impeaching him.   

 But first, they decided, the priority was to reinstate the judges Musharraf dismissed during a brief period of emergency
rule late last year in order to stop the Supreme Court ruling unlawful his re-election by the outgoing parliament. 

Critics poured scorn on Musharraf for not taking the honourable way out by resigning, having delivered an election
that was fairer and less violent than feared.  

Instead, Musharraf sat tight, and the calculation made by the president’s camp could well be working out. Musharraf’s aides always reckoned an alliance between the Pakistan People’s Party of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and the party led by her old rival Nawaz Sharif would be a short-lived affair.   

They felt the PPP, now under the leadership of Bhutto’s widower Asif Ali Zardari, had more to fear from Sharif’s resurgent Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), than it did from Musharraf. 

Sharif went some way to fulfilling these predictions by pulling the PML-N’s nine ministers out of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s 24-member cabinet, because the PPP failed to meet a deadline on Monday to restore the judges.  

For now the PPP-led government is leaving the ministries vacant, apparently in the hope that Zardari can talk Sharif round, or a compromise is reached over how and when to reinstate the judges.  

The PPP wants to link the reinstatement of the judges to constitutional amendments that could also include steps to strip Musharraf of presidential rights to dismiss a government.  

So there is a common sense of purpose, even if the coalition partners disagree on strategy, and the PML-N has promised carry on supporting Gilani’s government without being part of it.  

Yet, so long as the judges issue remains unresolved the government will be at risk of the PML-N pulling out entirely. 

If a lawyers’ movement, that championed the judiciary in its face-off with Musharraf last year, resumes street agitation,  Sharif must choose whether to back the lawyers and risk destabilising Gilani’s government further.  

The Pakistani people, as they showed in the February poll, had wished for better things from the civilian politicians after nine years under a military-backed government.  

A growing sense of disillusion hasn’t been helped by the United States energetic diplomacy in Pakistan.  Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher met Zardari and  Sharif in London last week as negotiations between the coalition  partners were about to fail.  

There was already a suspicion that Washington is somehow engineering Pakistan’s future by propping up Musharraf, and wants Sharif kept out of government because of doubts about his commitment to the war on terrorism.   

Western governments had encouraged Bhutto to work with Musharraf last year, though it was unclear what Bhutto would have ulitmately done if she’d lived.  

Many Pakistanis now suspect that Zardari could be planning to turn to Musharraf’s camp for support after shedding Sharif, but it is premature to jump to conclusions.  

The best that can be said of the split in the coalition at the moment, is that it has been relatively amicable, with the PML-N continuing to support the government.  

Both sides have refrained from getting into a blame game, and have instead issued statements expressing understanding for the position taken by the other.  

Pakistanis fear however this is the beginning of the end of the coalition and their dream team will give way to one that has little to do with last February’s election.  

When former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of the late Benazir Bhutto, agreed in March to form a coalition government in Pakistan, the words of the 19th century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli seemed apt:

“Coalitions, though successful, have always found this, that their triumph has been brief,” I quoted him as saying, in a posting which asked whether the coalition between Sharif’s PML (N) and Zardari’s PPP would survive.

It turns out the triumph has been even briefer than many expected.  Sharif pulled his party out of the government on Monday,  though he said his PML (N) party would continue to support the PPP-led government in parliament,  rather than sit in outright opposition.  At issue were differences over the restoration of judges sacked by President Pervez Musharraf when he declared a state of emergency in November, and over the future of the former army general who ousted Sharif in a 1999 coup. 

(The judiciary issue is fiendishly complex, but to simplify, Sharif wanted a complete restoration of the judges, who then in turn might have posed legal challenges to Musharraf.  Zardari wanted the judges restored, but with their wings clipped.  Zardari is also seen as less hostile to Musharraf than Sharif.)

Interestingly, the collapse of the coalition government came when many were calling on Sharif and Zardari to reach a consensus in order to concentrate on tackling Pakistan’s economic problems, and the challenges of reining in Islamist militants.

“The return to democracy in 2008 may be about to push the country to the brink of disaster simply because our politicians and media are not capable of taking the long view,” the Daily Times said in an editorial on Monday before Sharif announced he was pulling his party out of the government. ”The two parties must accommodate each other’s positions and move on from the present deadlock and deal with the bigger problems whose solution is overdue,” it said.

According to a poll by the blog All Things Pakistan, only 22 percent of respondents believed the row over the judges would kill off the coalition by the end of May.

So will this latest political crisis push Pakistan to what the Daily Times called “the brink of disaster”?  Or is there a new resilience in the political system following the February elections that will see the country through?

And what does this mean for Musharraf, who as this blog said at the time must have been hoping after the February elections that the political parties would squabble too much among themselves to form an effective coalition against him?