IHS Global Insight Perspective

Significance:Efforts are being made to stymie the march, which is expected to culminate in a mass indefinite protest in the capital, Islamabad, early next week.

Implications:The situation underlines the degree to which the government feels threatened. The reinstatement of the judiciary could create very specific problems for key leaders, notably President Asif Ali Zardari, but the protest also holds the potential to create a much broader anti-government movement, tapping into public disillusionment with the administration.

Outlook: How the judiciary and the public react to the crackdown, and how the government handles the resultant situation in the coming days will determine how this plays out. In terms of stability, the best-case scenario will be a low-level, poorly attended protest that fails to garner widespread support. The worst-case is the development of a major stand-off, with the campaign securing mass support and attendant clashes. This would set a pattern for the coming months, signalling heightened political and security risks.

The Government Girds Itself

This week has seen the government step up its activities against the opposition and legal community. Mass arrests of opposition supporters have been made. Key figures, including political leader Imran Khan have been placed under house arrest.

A number of legal leaders have either been arrested or gone into hiding to avoid detention, including deposed chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and former Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leader, Aitzaz Ahsan. Furthermore, the local authorities have banned protest activity in Punjab and Sindh.

The government has justified these moves on the basis that it cannot afford a breakdown in security in such key locations as Islamabad. This direct action has essentially become necessary because the opposition and lawyers have shown no signs of backing down in the face of earlier broadsides fired by the government.

Over the weekend, the government warned Nawaz Sharif that it would use the constitution against him, tabling sedition charges, if he continued to press for the judiciary's restoration and broader action against the administration. Prior to this, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of a ban on holding office for both Sharif, and his brother, Shahbaz. This was regarded as a politically-influenced decision and one that both men have ascribed to President Asif Ali Zardari. As a result of the ban, Shahbaz lost his post as chief minister of Punjab, with the government swiftly imposing governor's rule on the assembly.

The Divide Widens

Some observers have expressed surprise that there has been no climb down by either the government or the opposition. Instead, the divide between the political leaders has grown in recent days, despite pressure from the international community for political unity.

This reflects a number of factors: neither the government nor the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has an alternative. The PPP cannot reinstate the judiciary because to do so will potentially undermine its own position, and the PML-N has invested so much into this campaign and is intent on removing the government that it cannot back down.

The lack of unity highlights a fundamental mistrust, which has grown in recent months, as well as ideological differences between the parties. The situation also underlines the personalities involved, particularly that of Nawaz Sharif. Sharif is noted for his dogged, inflexible attitude on certain issues, and the judicial reinstatement has become one of these.

By sticking to his policy stance, he has sought and gained the moral high ground over the likes of Zardari, and intends to capitalise on this. He will be calculating that the risk of being arrested and charged is worth the boost in support that such a move would provide him with. That said, this is a gamble that could take him out of the political running, albeit in the short term.

The Issues at Stake

The Judiciary

At its heart this campaign centres on the treatment of the judiciary. Under former president Pervez Musharraf, the rather too independent-minded chief justice Chaudhry was dismissed in March 2007 because Musharraf feared that he would rule against him on the matter of another term in the presidential office.

At the time, Musharraf did not suspect that this would morph into a much wider campaign. This highlighted the judiciary's anger at the long-term treatment of their institution by successive governments and also wider mistrust of Musharraf and his policy decisions.

In a bid to contain the fall-out, Musharraf took the dramatic step of imposing a state of emergency in November 2007, during which he dismissed a further 60 or so judges who failed to support his action. It is the question of reinstating these individuals as well as Chaudhry on which the campaign fundamentally hangs.

Inevitably, the campaign is broader than this. The reason that Zardari cannot support the reinstatement centres on his own personal actions. Ahead of February 2008's election, he and his wife, Benazir Bhutto, secured a controversial amnesty with Musharraf.

The National Reconciliation Order (NRO) provided both of them, as well as a number of other individuals, with an amnesty on the existing charges facing them in Pakistan. Notably, the amnesty was not extended to the Sharif brothers, which is why the Supreme Court recently ruled against them on earlier charges.

If Chaudhry and his colleagues are reinstated, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) fears that the reconstituted Supreme Court will question the NRO, finding it legally lacking. In this instance, Zardari would lose his post as president, and with it, the PPP would lose the wide-ranging political powers that come with the presidency. Complicating matters further, Zardari has a poor history with Chaudhry. He has previously accused the former chief justice of complicity in what he views as a campaign that was made against him while he was in prison on murder and corruption charges during the 1990s. With this in mind, Zardari is probably even more certain that Chaudhry would rule against him.

Party Mistrust

The level of mistrust between the country's two main civilian parties should not be underestimated. From the early days of their attempts to share power following the election in February 2008 problems were evident and these have grown.

The PML-N feels that the PPP has sold out to former allies of Musharraf. The two parties formed a Charter of Democracy (CoD) during the period in which their leaders were exiled. The PML-N has largely pursued this, but feels that under Zardari's leadership, the PPP has forgotten its pledges and proven too willing to work with those whom they formerly opposed.

At the same time however, the PPP speaks the language of reconciliation and views the PML-N's activities as destabilising the political sphere.

The PPP has suggested that the PML-N is acting undemocratically and its actions threaten to invite the intervention of the military back into politics at a time when it is attempting to foster democracy. Events in recent weeks have only heightened this sense of mistrust: the PML-N contends that the PPP has sought to take control of the Punjab assembly in which it currently has a strong majority. PPP-appointed governor Salmaan Taseer currently administers the assembly following Shahbaz Sharif's dismissal, and the PPP is scrambling to form a majority in the assembly.

Outlook and Implications

There are many unknown quantities that feed into this situation. It is unclear if the government has curtailed the scope for protest action sufficiently. If it has, then low-level activity should be expected, dissipating swiftly without too much disruption.

It is unclear just how the electorate views the situation and whether Sharif has succeeded in his attempts to goad the population into action. Certainly rallies at which he has spoken in recent days have been large, and his comments reportedly well received. The security situation in Pakistan is often likened to a pressure cooker. Tensions rise steadily and then, once the right catalyst is found, heat up rapidly, resulting in violence on the streets, which then dissipates as swiftly as it began. If the judicial issue is the catalyst then widespread unrest can be expected, despite the mass arrests.

As recent history has shown, it is not just the more restive cities like Karachi that will be affected. It shouldn't be forgotten that the Sharif brothers' heartland is Punjab, signalling possible unrest in Lahore, despite the protest ban. At this stage, the military's intervention in politics remains highly unlikely.

Chief of Army Staff General Parvez Ashfaq Kayani has repeatedly stated his commitment to respecting civilian rule, and has been at pains to withdraw the army from politics following the end of the Musharraf era.

The political situation is not stable, but has not reached the point where the military will feel pressure to step in. Instead the army is likely to revert to the type of role it played during the 1990s, manipulating politics from behind the scenes without taking an overt role. If, as is entirely possible, the military comes to view Zardari's position as untenable, it will press for his replacement with a more pliable figure.