What’s happening now in Pakistan?

Pakistan’s fallen out the the headlines here in Britain. Even worse, we just get the odd snippet of news – Musharraf quits as army chief; Musharraf promises elections in January; Musharraf announces the emergency will end on 15 December – which might make it seem as though Pakistan were returning to consitutionalism and that everything’s back to normal. It’s not.

It’s true that Musharraf’s going to hold elections, end the emergency and so on, and that he’s now a civilian president. But as the emergency comes towards its end it’s become absolutely clear that all of this – the restrictions, the detentions – was aimed simply at getting round the threat to http://www.gooakley.com/ Musharraf’s rule that had been posed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Now he has the ruling he needed from his puppet court he can revert to constitutionalism, but intends to leave his hand-picked Supreme Court in place. The big issue now is whether he’ll get away with this – he’s trying to buy off the sacked judges with pensions – or whether pressure from lawyers and others will force him to restore sacked judges to their positions and return to the true status quo ante.

Lawyers and judges are still in detention, including former Chief Justice Chaudhury and President of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Aitzaz Ahsan, who it seems from Pakistaniat.com wrote to lawyers recently proposing a political strategy in the event that the main parties do not cheap oakley boycott the elections – which seems to be coming to pass now the Muslim League apparently will field candidates, though not Nawaz Sharif. His proposed strategy includes continuing the boycotts lawyers are carrying out of Musharraf’s puppet judges, who are in regional high courts as well as the Supreme Court – there must now be considerable backlogs in cases in some courts, including the Supreme Court. And he proposes pressing candidates to take public oaths promising to restore sacked judges and the pre-November 3rd position. Lawyers and others are continuing to protest, as can be seen from these news items from Dawn.

So Musharraf’s not got this stitched up by a long way.