Word: musharraf
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...police and the military used tear gas to suppress a protest by thousands of lawyers in Pakistan's largest cities, opposition leader Benazir Bhutto spoke to TIME about the imposition of martial law by President Pervez Musharraf. She said that Musharraf was falling under the sway of the more radical parts of his Pakistan Muslim League (Q) (PML-Q) party. Still, she said she was not shutting the door on negotiations with Musharraf. Bhutto, who leads the huge People's Party, has not asked her millions of fervent followers to come out into the streets. During the interview, she evinced...
...emergency declaration came as Pakistan's Supreme Court was expected to rule in the next two weeks on the legality of Musharraf's candidacy for another term as President. Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, a thorn in Musharraf's side since the President suspended the judge earlier this year only to see him reinstated after massive public protests, was removed from his job and placed under house arrest. Members of the Supreme Court were required to sign a new provisional constitutional order that would mandate the state of emergency. But most of the justices instead signed a declaration calling the state...
...that prediction is to prove true then much will depend on the reaction of ordinary Pakistanis. Musharraf is deeply unpopular. Hundreds of thousands of people turned out at protests in support of Chaudhry earlier this year. But it's possible that with the ousted chief justice and other anti-Musharraf judicial leaders under arrest popular resentment may not grow sufficiently hot. Another potential rallying point is former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who returned to Pakistan in October for the first time in eight years as part of a deal with Musharraf that would allow her to run in parliamentary elections...
...state of emergency puts Washington in an increasingly uncomfortable position. The Bush Administration has long backed Musharraf as a key ally in the war on terror, while regularly calling for a return to democracy. Musharraf's latest move makes that balancing act harder to keep up. "The U.S. has made clear it does not support extra-constitutional measures because those measures take Pakistan away from the path of democracy and civilian rule," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters soon after the news of the state of emergency broke. "Whatever happens we will be urging a quick return to civilian...
Lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan says there is no chance of that. "This is the kind of tolerance he has shown for the rule of law in this country," says Ahsan. "Everything he does is illegal. President Musharraf is illegal." But with the independence of Pakistan's highest court now in tatters, it's power, not laws, that matter...