Word: zardari
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...Pakistan A Return to Turmoil Pakistan's Supreme Court barred opposition leader Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz from holding elected office--a move that sparked nationwide protests among supporters. The ruling, which Sharif claims was ordered by President Asif Ali Zardari, revives a poisonous rivalry between Pakistan's main parties. Sharif supporters have campaigned to reinstate members of the Supreme Court dismissed by ousted former President Pervez Musharraf...
...Zardari's government insists that it did not lean on the judges to rule against his rivals. "The federal government has nothing to do with the Supreme Court's decision, but we commiserate," says Farahnaz Ispahani, a presidential spokeswoman. "This is not what we sought from our policy of reconciliation." The charges against the Sharifs, she adds, were not introduced by the present government but by former President Pervez Musharraf, after he toppled Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup in 1999. (One of the charges that led to Sharif's disqualification was his alleged role in the 1999 hijacking...
...hastily arranged press conference at his sprawling home on the outskirts of Lahore, Nawaz Sharif raised the political temperature with a fiery attack on Zardari. "The nation should rise against this unconstitutional decision and this villainous act of Zardari," he said, his face swollen with rage. In a sign that the country was returning to the politics of the 1990s - a period when four civilian governments collapsed in the span of a decade - the former Prime Minister resurrected accusations of corruption. "Where are those millions of dollars?" Sharif asked in reference to allegations that Zardari salted away the spoils...
Despite the denials from the ruling party, many observers believe political opportunism may have been in play. "Put it this way: Zardari did not try to block or prevent the ruling," says Nusrat Javeed, a political commentator. "Indeed, he waited for it to take political advantage of it." Others point out that Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer recently boasted that the PPP would soon be in charge of the province...
...showdown between Zardari and the Sharifs had been brewing since the PML-N broke away from the ruling coalition following a dispute over the restoration of judges sacked by Musharraf. Zardari had agreed to reinstate Iftikhar Chaudhry, the deposed Chief Justice who became a symbol of the lawyer-led movement against Musharraf's dictatorship but then backtracked once the military ruler left office. Nawaz Sharif had since been quietly positioning himself as an alternative to the PPP, even as Zardari struggled to contend with the pressures of a souring economy, rising militancy and a diplomatic standoff with India...