By Candace Rondeaux and Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 22, 2008
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 21 -- Pakistan's victorious opposition parties agreed Thursday to form a governing coalition in the newly elected Parliament, signaling a break from past political rivalries and imposing a fresh challenge to President Pervez Musharraf, a U.S. ally.
Asif Ali Zardari, co-chairman of the Pakistan People's Party, said his political movement will join forces with Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister who heads a faction of the Pakistan Muslim League.
Zardari's slain wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, and Sharif were bitter rivals for years but began working in tandem against Musharraf before her Dec. 27 assassination.
But Zardari and Sharif, speaking together from the courtyard of Zardari's home here, pledged to set aside decades of political enmity to address such issues as restoring an independent judiciary in the country of 165 million people. They also reached out to smaller parties that won parliamentary seats in elections held Monday amid fears of violence and vote-rigging.
"We intend to stay together," said Zardari, a former national legislator who, like Sharif, has been accused of corruption in the past. "We intend to be together in Parliament. We will work for Pakistan together. We will make a stronger Pakistan."
The agreement ended weeks of speculation over whether the two men could bring their parties together following the parliamentary elections, which culminated a violent year in Pakistani politics, epitomized by Bhutto's assassination.
The alliance will be a political threat to Musharraf, the former military chief who ousted Sharif in a 1999 coup. The Bush administration has sent billions of dollars in aid to the Musharraf government, which it views as a partner against rising Islamic radicalism in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan.
Neither Sharif nor Zardari called directly for Musharraf's ouster, but both made clear they would not enter an alliance with the president's Pakistan Muslim League-Q faction.
"I think the nation today has given out its verdict and that verdict is amply clear, and it is from every nook and corner of Pakistan," Sharif said. "He also understands that. The sooner he accepts the verdict the better it is for him."
Musharraf has said he will not resign as president, setting up a potential showdown between the new parliamentary coalition and his unpopular government that could end with his impeachment.
A sitting president can be impeached if he is judged by a joint session of the Pakistani Senate and National Assembly to have violated the country's constitution or committed gross misconduct. A two-thirds parliamentary majority is needed to remove the president from office, and it is unclear whether the opposition could muster that support.
But many analysts here agree that Musharraf, who stepped down as army chief last year, faces daunting political obstacles.
"The moment for an honorable and graceful exit is long past," said Rifaat Hussain, a Pakistani defense analyst, speaking from Sri Lanka. "Now, unless he can manage to cause a rift in the opposition, he will either have to quit eventually under the pressure of street agitation by the lawyers, or leave office under the threat of impeachment by the new Parliament."
On Thursday, lawyers' groups held rallies in several cities, demanding Musharraf's resignation and the restoration of judges he dismissed -- the issue that sparked much of the recent unrest. The lawyers have threatened mass protests next month if he does not reinstate the fired judges.
Rashid Qureshi, a retired army general and Musharraf's spokesman, said the president wants a smooth and successful transition to civilian rule. In an interview Thursday, he said Musharraf "wants to avoid confrontation" with the opposition parties and will gradually "ease himself out" of politics "in a peaceful and civil manner."
But Qureshi said Musharraf would not step down under pressure.
Neither Sharif nor Zardari would say whether they have agreed on a candidate for prime minister, and their overall political agenda remained short of details.
But their agreement will likely lead to the reinstatement of Pakistan's chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, whom Musharraf fired and placed under house arrest last year. Chaudhry was one of about 60 judges Musharraf fired after declaring a state of emergency in November.
Although neither Sharif nor Zardari mentioned Chaudhry specifically, they said they have agreed to work through parliamentary channels to reinstate those judges and restore the judiciary's independence.
The two men spoke about their parties' partnership as they sat on throne-like chairs beneath a portrait of Bhutto and Pakistan's founding leader, Muhammed Ali Jinnah. The mood was upbeat as Sharif, dressed in a traditional Pakistani salwar-kameez and dark vest, laughed and joked with Zardari, who looked relaxed in his dark suit and tie. Their opposing styles were on display in other ways, too.
Hours before meeting Zardari for the first time since the elections, Sharif joined a protest by lawyers near Chaudhry's home in Islamabad. In a fiery impromptu speech, Sharif, who was barred from running for a seat in Parliament, vowed to deliver on his party's promise to restore Chaudhry to the bench.
By contrast, Zardari has been more reserved in his statements, saying Wednesday that the decision to reinstate the ousted judges rests with Parliament.
Many Pakistani analysts agree that Zardari's more conservative stance cost the Pakistan People's Party support in the elections, particularly in the central province of Punjab, where more than half the nation's voters reside. Any loss for Zardari's party, also known here as the PPP, likely translated into more seats for Sharif's party and made their unlikely partnership more of a political necessity.
Their rivalry dates to the 1990s, a decade of abrupt power shifts in which the Pakistan People's Party under Benazir Bhutto and Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League each held power twice before being dismissed or overthrown.
Bhutto married Zardari shortly before she became prime minister in 1988, and they developed a close political partnership, as well as joint business dealings that led to charges of corruption and her dismissal from office twice. Sharif ultimately succeeded Bhutto as prime minister on both occasions.
Their enduring competition was ideological, regional and personal.
Bhutto was from a feudal land-holding family in Sindh province; Sharif is from a family of urban industrialists in Punjab province. Bhutto's party was secular; Sharif drew more from Islam. There was a history of bitter personal enmity, too. Bhutto's father, former prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in 1979 during the military rule of Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq. Sharif first came to power as a provincial official in the 1980s as Zia's protege and had the crucial support of the army. In 1999, when Sharif, then prime minister, was overthrown by Musharraf, Bhutto supported the coup.
Despite their longtime rivalry, Sharif rushed to the hospital where Bhutto was taken after the fatal attack on her campaign convoy. Later, he traveled to Sindh to pay his respects.
As his party campaigned against the PPP this month, Sharif continued to praise Bhutto's memory. Some analysts said his party benefited as much from the post-assassination sympathy vote as hers.
On Thursday, Sharif and Zardari said their parties' first initiative in Parliament would be to call for a U.N. investigation of Bhutto's assassination.
Special correspondent Shahzad Khurram in Islamabad contributed to this report.
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