Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf believes he can tough out the worst crisis of his eight-year rule. It may be another miscalculation, writes Graham Usher in Islamabad On 13 April -- for the fourth time in as many weeks -- Pakistan's suspended chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, stood before the Supreme Court in Islamabad on charges that he had abused his office. And, for the fourth time in as many weeks, thousands went with him, demanding not only his reinstatement but that the regime that had laid the ruling against him, Pakistan's military government of General Pervez Musharraf, stand down. "The protests will continue until Chaudhry returns and Musharraf goes," said Zahir Hassan, a protesting lawyer in Islamabad. The sentiment was echoed in rallies in Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta, Karachi and a dozen other Pakistani cities. The affair of the chief justice is now the worst crisis Musharraf has faced since he took power in a coup in 1999. At root it is a crisis of legitimacy of the centralised military regime he has tried to establish. Just about everyone in Pakistan -- and many, many beyond -- believes Chaudhry was sacked because he defied the army, the real power behind Pakistan's façade of civilian governance. The generals and their political allies wanted a chief justice pliant enough to rule that Musharraf could be re- elected president by an existing parliament rigged in his favour. They also wanted him to keep his uniform as army commander. Chaudhry had said such a dispensation would be unconstitutional. So Musharraf fired him. It was a blunder of "Himalayan" proportions says Syed Fakhar Imam, former speaker of the Pakistan parliament. "Removing a chief justice by diktat is unthinkable, even in Pakistan. But Chaudhry's courage was the catalyst. For the first time in Pakistan's history a chief justice stared a general in the eye and did not blink. This gave the people the strength to protest in defence of the law and the most basic tenets of democracy." The protests are growing. The 13 April rallies were the largest yet, with 4,000 in Islamabad. The lawyers are still the vanguard, with the men in their signature black suits, and the women in white veils and black jackets. But now their ranks are swelled by political activists of every hue, from rural tribesmen marching under the banner of Islam to urban socialites fluttering the flag of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), party of exiled ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto. All can smell that eight long years of martial rule may be coming to an end. The augury is infectious. "My uniform says I'm with the government," said a police officer in Islamabad, one of the thousand or so that ringed the Supreme Court. "But my heart is with the people, with the chief justice". Before him a dozen men danced on a smoldering effigy of the president. Another man walked around in clanking chains, personifying Pakistani justice. Pakistan's rulers are in a funk. Some are advising the president that he admit his blunder, reinstate Chaudhry and promise to give up his position or his uniform or both ahead of elections later this year. Others say this is a U-turn too far. They are looking for a patsy, with Pakistan's unctuous prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, being fattened as the likeliest calf. But most for now are behind what is said to be Musharraf's preferred strategy -- to tough the crisis out in the belief that time and the long summer will wilt the protests so that Pakistan's military state can revert to type. It would be a miscalculation no less wrong than the decision to sack the chief justice, says Imran Khan, once Pakistan's most famous cricketer, now the leader of Pakistan's Tehreek-e-Insaf or Movement of Justice Party. "The status quo cannot be maintained. Musharraf is fatally wounded. People say these protests are the beginning of the elections campaign. But they're not. They are beginning of a genuine democratic system in Pakistan. If this movement continues, Pakistan will for the first time have a truly independent judiciary -- one that draws its strength from the people, not from the army HQ." But while Pakistan's opposition parties are united against Musharraf, they are divided on everything else. The secularist PPP will not work with the Islamists. There are rumours that Benazir Bhutto could even strike a pact with Musharraf in exchange for her return and the PPP's ascendancy in free and fair elections. And while the Islamists spit at Musharraf's name -- and his "American" agenda -- they share power with his ruling party in two of Pakistan's four provinces. As for Washington, it remains stalwart in defence of the general, save for occasional platitudes that "the law should be upheld" -- something Musharraf has never upheld in his life. More ominously, some Pakistanis fear that a "coincidence of interest" may emerge in which the Islamists take over what is becoming an increasingly anti-Musharraf movement so that the army can declare an emergency and elections can be indefinitely postponed. It's possible. In January radical Islamist clerics and madrassa students occupied a public library in Islamabad in protest at the government's demolition of several mosques built illegally on state land. Since then the library has become the base of Taliban-like gangs that have abducted women for alleged prostitution, set bonfires of DVDs for their "Western immorality" and issued a fatwa against a woman minister for "un-lslamic behaviour". The clerics have also warned that if the state does not implement Sharia throughout Pakistan, they will. The government response to this fascist-like vigilantism has been to pledge to rebuild the mosques and mount a campaign against brothels in Islamabad. For some it amounts to a colossal surrender before Pakistan's creeping Talibanisation. But for others it underscores -- eight years after the coup and six years after 9/11 -- how the military-mullah alliance remains the foundation of Musharraf's rule, and never more so than when it is challenged.
