Pakistan Descends Into Political Turmoil

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 12, 2008 — -- Amid spiraling food prices, rising militant violence and a crime wave sweeping the country, Pakistanis watched with dismay as the ruling coalition collapsed today after less than seven weeks in power.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced his Pakistan Muslim League's withdrawal from the federal Cabinet after party leaders failed to agree on a formula to restore Supreme Court justices, whose firing last year sparked a political crisis prompting widespread street protests and the imposition of martial law.

"The issue of the restoration of the judges has engulfed the entire nation," Sharif told journalists in Islamabad. "I am sorry to say that even after 30 days we could not restore the judges."

President Pervez Musharraf fired the Supreme Court judges in March 2007 and declared emergency rule in November to halt legal challenges to his serving simultaneously as army chief and president.

Under immense international pressure, the U.S.-backed military leader stepped down as army chief Nov. 28 and called for general elections to go forward.

The moderate Pakistan People's Party won the vote, which followed the Dec. 27 assassination of its leader Benazir Bhutto. The party formed a coalition with Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League, its traditional rival, amid promises to reinstate the judges.

But Bhutto's party, now led by her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, waffled on its pledge to restore the judges. Its policy change came after the government dropped outstanding corruption cases against Zardari, who was nicknamed "Mr. 20 Percent" during his wife's second term in office for the bribes he allegedly demanded.

The People's Party, which has other coalition partners, continues to enjoy a majority in the 342-seat National Assembly. But the ruling coalition will lose the two-thirds majority necessary to make constitutional amendments, and to launch impeachment proceedings against Musharraf.

Few analysts expected the alliance between the People's Party and the Muslim League to last. But many Pakistanis expressed disappointment that it had come apart at the seams so quickly.

Terrorist violence and political upheavals sent Pakistan lurching from one crisis to another in 2007. Many here hoped 2008, and the first democratically elected government in almost a decade, would bring more stable times.

"After two months in power this government has achieved nothing and prices keep getting higher," said Mohammed Azad, a cook from Kashmir. "How will they solve the food crisis if they can't even agree on the judges?"

For ordinary Pakistanis, 70 percent of whom live on less than $2 a day, the global spike in food prices is a far greater concern than the fate of a handful of elite judges. The price of flour and rice has more than doubled in recent weeks, while the Pakistan rupee has plunged against the dollar, making fuel imports more costly.

The new government has faired poorly in other sectors as well. Pakistan is desperately short on power. Electrical brownouts lasting up to eight hours have sparked violent street protests.

Although the new government pledged to negotiate with pro-Taliban militants blamed for a rash of terrorist violence in 2007, early peace deals with the insurgents appear to be failing, too. Islamic extremists have taken control of much of one area in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal region, where there is fierce fighting with the Pakistan army.

Widening militancy and hard economic times also have sparked a crime wave, with kidnappings for ransom and highway robberies on the increase. Many Pakistanis complain that their leaders battle over personal issues, with little concern for the mounting problems faced by the ordinary individual here.

"We have hit bottom here, and now we are drilling into the bedrock," Syed Sajjad Haider, a retired Air Force commander publishing a history book on Pakistan, told ABC News. "We don't have leadership at all. This is all politics of ego."