ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Muslim League (N) led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has started piling pressure on the ruling party to impeach President Pervez Musharraf. The PML(N), which is the main ruling coalition partner, said yesterday it had decided to impeach the president, who last week ruled out any immediate plans to resign or go into exile.
The warning by the party came a day after its top leader, Sharif, whose government was overthrown by Musharraf in 1999, stated that the beleaguered president would not be given a “safe exit.” A motion will be tabled in the Senate, or upper house of the Parliament, soon to impeach Musharraf, said PML-N lawmaker Hanif Abbasi during a post-budget debate in the Parliament yesterday. Abbasi did not give an exact date for the move. Abbasi said a number of officials including the attorney general and the home secretary were the remnants of the previous government and should be removed.
Musharraf is facing increasing demands by political parties and lawyers to resign after he purged the senior judiciary of more than 60 independent-minded judges, including then chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, by imposing emergency rule last November.
Thousands of lawyers flanked by rights and political activists Friday converged on Islamabad as their cross-country vehicular rally, dubbed as the “long march,” reached its climax, with calls for reinstatement of sacked judges and ouster of Musharraf.
Though many were hopeful of staging a decisive sit-in outside the parliament building to press the government on the issue, the protest by a gathering of 40,000 demonstrators fizzled out early Saturday morning when attorneys’ leader Aitzaz Ahsan asked the participants to return without giving any future course of action.
“We will fight the war at the right time and at the right place,” Ahsan said amid severe criticism from a group of agitated protesters, who made abortive attempts to break through the multitier cordons on the boulevard leading to the Parliament building.
The agitators accused Ahsan of striking a “deal” with the goverment led by Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Critics say the PPP is dilly-dallying on the issue because it wants to give a “respectable exit” to Musharraf reportedly under US pressure, and the senior judges, especially Chaudhry, once restored, can pose a real challenge to the embattled president for his disputed re-election and other controversial decisions.
PPP is also believed to be in an agreement with Musharraf over a law he passed last October, tailored to drop court cases against Bhutto and Zardari to pave theway for their re-entry into mainstream politics. Zardari has been acquitted in a series of cases, mostly dealing with graft charges, under the controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance.
— With input from agencies
