ISLAMABAD, 6 June 2003 — Pakistan’s powerful Islamic parties yesterday vowed revenge against President Pervez Musharraf’s government for its removal of top officials in an Islamist-ruled province following its imposition of Shariah law.
“After pelting stones at us, the government should not expect flowers in return,” warned Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, parliamentary leader of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) alliance of fundamentalist parties.
“What the government is doing in NWFP, its reaction will now be felt in the center (federal Parliament),” he said, referring to the federal government’s removal of North West Frontier Province’s police chief and chief administrative secretary.
The key officials were removed on Wednesday, two days after the MMA-dominated NWFP assembly voted unanimously to impose Shariah law across the province on the border with Afghanistan.
Shariah Law 2003 establishes a department of vice and virtue, which critics are comparing to the Taleban’s notorious Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Discouragement of Vice. It also sets up three commissions that have one month to examine the economy, judiciary and education systems and recommend ways to “Islamize” them.
While the MMA rules in conservative NWFP, it spearheads the opposition in the federal Parliament.
It is the focus of desperate efforts by the federal government to break the opposition’s fiery eight-month campaign to force Musharraf to quit the presidency and the military and submit to a standard presidential election. Opposition protests have paralyzed the eight-month old Parliament, preventing passage of any legislation since its inception as the first elected legislature after three years of military rule by Musharraf. Not a single bill has been passed.
The standoff is poised to come to a head tomorrow when the government is to present the next budget at a specially convened session of Parliament. The secular opposition parties of ex-prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif have vowed to sabotage the session to prevent the budget’s delivery. For the past three weeks the government has mounted an intensive bid to persuade Islamic parties to soften their demands on Musharraf’s position, and had claimed earlier this week to be near a deal.
But Ahmed said the government has now blown chances of a compromise, which centered on enforcement of Islamic principles on a national scale. “We were close to an agreement with the government to break the constitutional deadlock and shown tremendous flexibility, but some elements within the ruling coalition sabotaged it for their vested interests,” he said.
