Pak Protesters March despite Government Ban
In what easily is the biggest ever challenge faced by PPP co-chair and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, thousands of PML-N supporters started a four-day anti-government march from Karachi on Thursday, the 1,500 km protest march is headed for the federal capital Islamabad.
A thick security blanket has engulfed several Pakistani cities, in wake of the protest march call issued by former Prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
Plain-clothes policemen baton charged activists at several places and forcibly took them away after cramming them into vans.
In a belligerent mood, Sharif’s supporters along with lawyers and political activists took to the streets despite a ban on public gatherings and incidents of police brutality being reported from several parts of the country.
According to media reports, police detained dozens of political activists in Karachi and several other parts of the country to quell the protest that puts the protesters on a collision course with the Zardari administration and questions the stability of the government in Islamabad.
On Wednesday, the Zardari government banned public gatherings in the key provinces of Punjab and Sindh and ordered the detention of activists bent on breaching the order.
The protesters are demanding the immediate reinstatement of the country’s top judge who was removed from office by former President Pervez Musharraf, when he clamped emergency.
The reinstatement was a key election promise that saw an alliance of Nawaz Sharif and Zardari vote out the former general, but cracks soon appeared in the coalition government and Sharif first pulled out ministers from the cabinet and later withdrew support from the government over the issue.
Sharif was further embittered last month, when a Pakistani court banned Sharif and his brother Shahbaz from contesting elections and holding constitutional offices in the country.
Shahbaz was the chief minister of the Punjab province till the order ousted him from office, Punjab was later placed under gubernatorial rule.
The Zardari government has come in for severe criticism over the court order that many in Pakistan view as politically motivated.
The Sharif duo, however, have refused to accept any verdict delivered by judges installed into office by Musharraf, during the emergency he clamped on the country before the elections.
With Pakistan’s flimsy democratic veil yet again strained by political one-upmanship and utter opportunism, the days to come are crucial for Zardari, especially as the protests come days after country’s all-powerful army is reported to have issued a stern ultimatum to the Bhutto widower.
On Wednesday, prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said he will advise Zardari to reconsider his imposition of governor’s rule in Punjab, Sharif’s stronghold, and allow the majority PML-N to form a government in the province.
