The Supreme Court's decision to allow ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif to return to Pakistan has reduced even more of President Musharraf's options, writes Graham Usher A small man in a white shalwar kameez skidded along the lobby of Pakistan's Supreme Court, crashing into three guards and a metal-detector. "We've won!" he yelled. "Nawaz is coming home!" Outside the court's main entrance ranks of party workers, lawyers and press explode in a tumult of waving flags and banging drums. From the grassy moat that surrounds the Supreme Court there is a smell of sacrificed sheep. Pakistan's Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohamed Chaudhry, had just ruled that the former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif had an "inalienable" right to return to his country "unhindered" by any government action. Pakistani government lawyers argued the understanding precluded Sharif's return to Pakistan for ten years. The Supreme Court said it did not. The government -- through the most gritted of teeth -- said it would abide by the law. Of all Pakistan's political leaders, Musharraf detests Sharif the most. As recently as July he said the ex-prime minister would "never" come back to Pakistan. On 8 August, Musharraf was a spit away from declaring emergency rule precisely to prevent that prospect becoming fact. Today, Musharraf suffers the supreme irony of the man he deposed returning not only to contest his government but once more challenge his power as president and army chief. It is the latest in a series of body blows that have left Pakistan's once unassailable ruler flinching on the ropes. Sharif's return will massively strengthen the opposition. The cadre from Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (PML) want their man back in the country by 10 September so that he can inaugurate a new mass All Party Movement for Democracy, probably from a rally in Peshawar. Their ranks will be swelled by Pakistan's 150,000 lawyers. These are now on a high due to their successful campaign to have Chaudhry restored as chief justice. In March, Musharraf had tried -- and failed -- to remove him. Government lawyers insist they have enough on Sharif to arrest him once he lands in Pakistan. More independent counsels say the old convictions expired with the presidential pardon. As for any new cases, "let them rain," says PML vice- president, Saranjam Zaminder. "We will take them to the Supreme Court and have them quashed." This is no longer hyperbole. Since Chaudhry's restoration as chief justice, the Supreme Court has issued a series of decrees that have clipped the powers of Pakistan's once mighty military government. Last month it ruled that PML leader, Javed Hashmi, be released from jail. It is currently issuing notices to Pakistan's ghostly intelligence agencies that either they render before court dozens of Pakistanis "disappeared" in the "war on terror" or face prosecution for illegal abduction. And now the Supreme Court has repatriated Sharif. "The judiciary's next verdict will be against Musharraf remaining army chief of staff," predicts cricketer-become-opposition politician, Imran Khan. Short of martial law, Musharraf's only shield against the newly unsheathed sword of Pakistani justice would seem to be a "deal" with another exiled leader, Benazir Bhutto. But this too seems to be heading for the rocks. In a torrent of media interviews, Bhutto has been blunt in her charge that Musharraf has reneged on several US-guaranteed "understandings" reached with her at a meeting in Abu Dhabi on 27 July. These include the lifting of a constitutional bar on her becoming prime minister for a third time and indemnity for all actions taken by her governments in the 1980s and 1990s. Via the Americans, Musharraf has reportedly promised he will "doff" his army uniform by the year's end. But he wants a pledge that Bhutto will support a constitutional amendment enabling him to become a civilian president should the Supreme Court ban him from running. This may be a bridge too far, even for Bhutto. Sixty-one parliamentarians and senators from her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) were recently asked whether their leader should be negotiating with a military ruler. Every one of them said no. Even if Bhutto can face down a party revolt, she knows every rumour of a trade with Musharraf will cost her and her party dearly at the polls. This is not only because clear majorities of Pakistanis want the army out of politics. It is because they want their future leadership determined by elections, not by deals brokered in Washington, London, Abu Dhabi or Riyadh, says a leader of Musharraf's ruling party: "My biggest worry with the 'deal' is not Benazir. I can live with her. It's the opposition's charge that this is an American government. They and the nation will say not only is our foreign policy minted in Washington, but so too is our domestic policy."
