ISLAMABAD: Pakistan plunged into a fresh political crisis yesterday after a court disqualified two-time former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from contesting a by-election, effectively blocking him from becoming prime minister a third time.
A three-judge bench of the Lahore High Court ruled Sharif was ineligible to contest a by-election for a parliamentary seat from Lahore because of convictions related to his ouster in a 1999 coup, which was led by the current president, Pervez Musharraf.
The decision was likely to deepen a rift between Sharif and his partner in the governing coalition over reinstating fired judges and could further destabilize the government.
“This ruling will undermine, in a major way, the effort for national reconciliation,” said Nasim Zehra, an analyst and fellow at Harvard University’s Asia Center. “It is not a politically sustainable judgment.”
Earlier this month, the nation’s election commission effectively cleared him to run in by-elections scheduled for Thursday after a tribunal set up to decide the matter failed to reach consensus.
However, the Lahore High Court, acting on a petition from a candidate and a voter, ruled that Sharif was ineligible to run for Parliament.
Sharif’s allies were furious, with dozens chanting “Go Musharraf go” outside the court and angry lawmakers walking out of the provincial assembly in protest.
About 100 Sharif supporters in Multan burned tires in the street.
Ahsan Iqbal, a spokesman for Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (N) party, said the ruling made Pakistan look like a “banana republic,” and he lashed out at Asif Ali Zardari, head of the Pakistan People’s Party, the senior partner in their ruling coalition.
The two party leaders have had sharp disagreements over how to reinstate dozens of senior judges that Musharraf fired during a state of emergency last year. Sharif, who pulled his members from the Cabinet over the rift, has demanded the government immediately restore the judges to the bench and remove their replacements, who he says are pawns of Musharraf.
Zardari has sought to link the return of the judges to constitutional reforms that could take months to pass and has called for keeping the replacement judges on the bench along with their predecessors.
— With input from agencies
