Editorial
Deepening crisis in Pakistan
It affects governance
Pakistan's crisis of governance deepens a little more with the country's Supreme Court dismissing an appeal by Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani against a summons in a contempt case. The prime minister's problems have been multiplying since the judiciary took serious exception to Gilani's reluctance to reopen old corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari. Despite the prime minister's view that the president has immunity from legal prosecution by virtue of the office he holds, the Supreme Court has continued insisting that Zardari's corruption be reinvestigated.
The judiciary certainly has a point. Reports of corruption surrounding Zardari and his late wife Benazir Bhutto have been circulating for years, especially with prosecutors in Switzerland collecting evidence on the extent of the couple's wrongdoing. But while the Supreme Court may be right in insisting that the matter be reopened for investigation, there is too the fact that the problem threatens to paralyse the government in Pakistan, to a point where politics, whatever there is of it, goes through emasculation. Add to that the troubles the government has been having with the army. In a clearly bizarre situation, the army has been open about its displeasure over the president's role in the writing and sending off of a memo to a senior US military official soliciting help in preventing any coup by the soldiers. The soldiers are miffed and many Pakistanis, for whom the Americans are today more an adversary than a friend, consider the memo to have been an insult for the country.
In these past many weeks, therefore, the government has been under pressure both from an angry military and a re-energised judiciary. If now Gilani is compelled to step down , there is little guarantee that the court and the soldiers will not then go after Zardari. Which again is a message for the government: it can either submit itself fully to the law, through telling Zardari and Gilani to let their places be taken by others as they face the law or it can continue as it is and let the country haemorrhage. And do not forget that an irate army lurks in the bushes.
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