Pakistan coalition unravels over judges dispute

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistan’s fragile governing coalition cracked open Monday as one of its major parties withdrew from the Cabinet, less than three months after elections that had united rival factions opposed to President Pervez Musharraf.

Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, announced that his party would leave all federal posts after talks broke down with the Pakistan People’s Party over how to restore the country’s former chief justice and 60 other judges who had been fired in November by Musharraf, Pakistan’s military ruler at the time.

Sharif, a former prime minister, said his party would remain in Parliament and had no desire to damage the government or the country. Looking grim and exhausted after days of negotiations, he told journalists that his decision was a “bitter pill, but we had to do it … we do not want to destabilize the democratic process.”

The split was seen by analysts as a significant blow to Pakistan’s progress toward mature democratic rule and a deep disappointment to the public, which ousted Musharraf’s party at the polls in February and had demanded the restoration of the judges during months of unprecedented civic protests.

Analysts also said the judicial dispute – and by extension, the question of Musharraf’s future – would now likely drag on, distracting the new government from addressing more important national problems, especially battling radical Islamist fighters and rebuilding the badly ailing economy.

“This is a huge setback for the government,” said Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistani security analyst based in Washington. He noted that Sharif’s pullout may give Musharraf a chance to reassert his political strength. “This crisis will distract attention from critical issues, and the real losers will be the people of Pakistan,” he said.

For the past month, Pakistanis watched with sinking hopes while Sharif and his archrival, Pakistan People’s Party leader Asif Ali Zardari, held three rounds of negotiations over the judicial dispute.

Sharif set Monday as a final deadline for Zardari to agree on a plan to restore the dismissed judges and bring the matter to Parliament. But Zardari, who took his post after the December assassination of his wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has been more ambivalent about the judges. He has said that the courts had failed to help him when he spent a decade in jail on unproved corruption charges.

A final round of talks between the two in London broke off with no agreement over the weekend.