New Delhi/Islamabad: A confrontation is looming between the Pakistan government and the Opposition over restoring a Supreme Court judges sacked two years ago, with former prime minister Nawaz Sharif bent on leading a countrywide "long march" of lawyers on the issue.
A spokesperson for President Asif Ali Zardari, who is visiting Tehran, rejected reports that the Army had asked him not to return to the country. "There is no change in the President's scheduled return to Islamabad. The reports of his staying on in Dubai and postponing his return are absolutely false, mischievous and seem deliberately designed to cause confusion," said the spokesperson.
Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Wednesday. Private TV news channels said the two leaders discussed the security situation in the country while state-run APP news agency said the two men discussed matters of national importance. Their meeting comes at a time when the country’s Interior Ministry has been asked to consult the army before taking any decisions.
PML-N chief Raja Zafarul Haq has been put under house arrest in Islamabad and over 150 party activists taken into custody, the News newspaper reported on Wednesday.
An arrest warrant has also been issued against cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, chief of the Tehrik-e-Insaaf party. Khan’s private secretary has been arrested and AFP reports police are searching for Khan, who lives just outside Islamabad.
Media reports in the country say Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), could be put under house arrest. The Punjab government on Tuesday night began a crackdown on PML-N leaders but a defiant Sharif vowed the struggle would continue.
This is despite the fact that Interior Minister Rehman Malik has threatened to slap sedition charges against Sharif if the march goes ahead on Thursday.
"These house arrests will not be able to foil the lawyers' long march," Geo TV on Wednesday quoted Sharif as saying.
"These are defining moments in Pakistan's history and we have to make a final decision. I cannot rest when Pakistan is being taken toward disastrous circumstances," said Sharif at a rally of his supporters in Abbotabad city. "We cannot compromise when all institutions are ruined and the system is on the verge of collapse."
The long march is to simultaneously begin on Thursday from Balochistan and Sindh and after passing through the Punjab province will culminate in a sit-in outside parliament in Islamabad.
Scores arrested, ban on protests in Sindh and Punjab
The News reports that "lists of (PML-N) workers' names have been provided to police stations after which police (carried) out raids to arrest these workers. Banners placed by PML-N for the long march have been removed".
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A spokesman for PML-N said he received reports from party offices across the country that members were being arrested, but he had no accurate numbers. Munawar Hassan, a leader of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan party, said "nearly two dozen of our supporters have been detained."
Officials have banned public gatherings in Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province and Sharif's stronghold, and Sindh.
Interior Ministry chief Rahman Malik defended the restrictions, saying provincial governments had do so to maintain peace and public security.
The ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the PML-N had emerged as the two largest parties after the February 2008 elections and agreed to form a coalition government.
However, they soon fell out after PPP co-chair Zardari reneged on a pledge to reinstate the judges, including then Supreme Court chief justice Ifthikar Mohammad Chaudhury. All of them were sacked after then president Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency in 2007.
Zardari apparently apprehended that Chaudhury could reopen the graft cases that Musharraf had ordered withdrawn.
This led to the PML-N pulling out of the federal coalition and its ministers resigning from the government of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
(With inputs IANS, PTI and AP. )
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