Pakistan's new coalition is another stage in the eclipse of President Pervez Musharraf, writes Graham Usher in Islamabad "The Pakistan People's Party [PPP] and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz [PML-N] undertake to form a coalition [government] for a democratic Pakistan and for translating the mandate given by the people of Pakistan... into action". So said PML-N leader and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif at a festive press conference near Islamabad on 9 March. He was shaking hands with Asif Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto and co-leader of her PPP. Both men radiated joy. No wonder: their coalition expresses an overwhelming Pakistani sentiment, which, in landmark elections on 18 February, returned the PPP and PML-N as Pakistan's largest parties. The same vote consigned Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's beleaguered president, as a leader in eclipse -- like his ally and sponsor since the 9/11 attacks on Washington and New York, George W Bush. The two parties had pledged a coalition government "in principle" from the moment of their victory. But two reefs snagged its emergence. One was Sharif's insistence that the PML-N could not join any government without a pledge to restore the 60 or so senior judges Musharraf had fired last year during emergency rule. Till 9 March the PPP had pledged only "an independent judiciary" -- aware that reinstatement, especially of Pakistan's Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohamed Chaudhry, would mean collision with the president. The second was the PPP's preference that it governs with the PML-N rather than alone, despite commanding the single largest number of seats in the 342 member parliament. "The PPP knew -- as we do -- that no single party can tackle the challenges Pakistan currently faces", said PML-N spokesman, Ahsan Iqbal. The PPP also knew a coalition with pro- Musharraf parties was a "non-starter", given the drubbing they had received at the polls, he added. "Whatever else the vote was, it wasn't a mandate to return power to the PML-Q, [the ex-ruling party that Musharraf had created to give a civilian face to his military rule. On 9 March the two parties finally shook free of the reefs. The coalition decided the restoration of the deposed judges as it was on 2 November 2007, i.e. before the imposition of emergency rule on 3 November] shall be brought about through a parliamentary resolution to be passed in the National Assembly within 30 days of the formation of the federal government," read Sharif, from a prepared text. In return the "PML-N shall be part of the cabinet" and "fully support" the PPP's nominee for prime minister, he said. The pronouncement was met with relief by the larger part of public opinion, the independent media and, above all, by Pakistan's 50,000 lawyers. They rightly saw the promise as a vindication of their year- long struggle to get the chief justice reinstated and the judiciary free from martial shackles. Many also saw it as the final curtain on Musharraf's eight-year dictatorship. Are they right? In theory, Musharraf retains all the power of an autocrat. He can dissolve the National Assembly and dismiss a prime minister. And no law can pass without his imprimatur, including a resolution to reinstate judges he had sacked for "conspiring" to oust him. But in practice the Pakistan president is an emperor losing his clothes. His allied parties have been reduced to a rump in the national and provincial assemblies. And while the institution he once led -- the army -- has denied any "distancing" from the president, it has also promised it will "play its constitutional role in support of the elected government": no small vow in a country that has seen five military coups. Even Bush seems to have realised this is the autumn of his patriarch, says a PML-N source. "The Americans keep asking us to accept him with reduced presidential powers. But can Musharraf accept reduced powers? Like most dictators he has the 'destiny syndrome'. He thinks he's indispensable". There are also matters of law and democracy. On 18 February Pakistanis elected a parliament and four provincial assemblies. Musharraf commands majority support in none of them. The PML-N has said it will demand fresh elections for a president all five houses can trust. Even the PPP says Musharraf should face a vote of confidence from the new assemblies. If he does, he will lose. Similarly if and when the judges are reinstated, they may well hear challenges to Musharraf's presidential "election" last fall. It was to prevent Chaudhry and other Supreme Court justices ruling on his candidacy that Musharraf sacked them. Could he do so again? How, asks former High Court judge Tariq Mahmoud. "Would he send the army onto the streets? That would mean civil war. And the army says it doesn't want this. Would he declare a new martial law? How could he enforce it? He's no longer army chief of staff. Who would support him internationally? Would America?" This is not bravado. Mahmoud was one of a handful of lawyers who took to the streets after 9 March 2007 when Musharraf made his first, abortive attempt to oust the chief justice. Mahmoud has spent nearly three months in prison for his pains. But he knows he and the other lawyers have set in train an irreversible process towards civilian rule. It is a measure of that movement's success that the fate of Pakistan's latest dictator still hangs in the scales of a judiciary he has twice tried to purge.
