While the PM emerges all-powerful in the battle with the President and chief justice, the real test is in rescuing the economy.

By Zahid Hussain

Everyone had expected the worst. In Pakistan that usually means a military takeover. Given the build-up, it was the most likely scenario. Especially with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif locked for months in a no-holds-barred battle with President Farooq Ahmed Leghari and Supreme Court chief justice Sajjad Ali Shah. The choice: army rule or constitutional collapse and anarchy.

Few expected the actual outcome. And if ever there was a contest for people snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, the democratic coup that Sharif engineered last week would put him among the front-runners. First, Leghari was forced to call a press conference and announce his resignation. Soon after, Shah stepped down from his post signalling an unprecedented political victory for Sharif. Now, with a pliant President in place, a battered judiciary, a Parliament where his party enjoys a brute majority and a seemingly tamed army, Sharif has emerged among the most powerful prime ministers that Pakistan has ever had.

While that puts him in a unique position to tackle the serious economic crisis his country faces with a decisiveness that was lacking so far, it also robs him of any excuse for failure. The months of political uncertainty have plunged the economy into further gloom. Inflation is currently running at a high of 15 per cent and there is little hope that his government will be able to keep the budget deficit in check. Even the most optimistic economic surveys show that growth will fall far short of the targeted 5.5 per cent. As in India, foreign investors have begun running shy and Sharif will have to give them plenty of incentives to woo them back.

Sharif will also have to resist the temptation of behaving like a dictator and restore the credibility of both the judiciary and the presidency which have taken a serious knocking after the battle. Fortunately for him, the new Acting Chief Justice Ajmal Mian has a reputation for uprightness and sagacity. He is unlikely to get involved in any ambitious political jousts and is expected to bring order and decorum back to the nation's highest judicial institution. While Parliament Speaker Wasim Sajjad was sworn in as acting President, Sharif will finally appoint a person who will not be hostile. However, there is never a guarantee -- Leghari, who had been handpicked by former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, turned against her in the end.

Sharif will also have to keep the army in good humour. For, he owes his victory largely to the army's last-minute tilt towards him. Its refusal to back the President and the chief justice provided Sharif with a favourable playing field. How he pulled it off is bound to become lore in his country. After all, only the week before, acute demoralisation had set in the ranks of the Government and its allies, who felt his fall was imminent.

Till then the odds were heavily stacked against Sharif. The battle between Shah and him had been brewing ever since Sharif came back to power in February. It broke out in right earnest in August when Shah sent a list of five judges of different high courts to the Government for their elevation to the Supreme Court. Sharif was disturbed by the choice of two of them, whom he perceived as hostile, and refused to approve the list. When Shah persisted, Sharif got the Government to issue an ordinance that reduced the strength of the court from 17 to 12, thus preventing any new appointments. But when the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) took up the matter, he backed out and withdrew the ordinance.

Meanwhile, Shah went on the offensive. He opened corruption cases against the prime minister that had been pending for months. When Sharif and his colleagues criticised Shah for suspending the anti-defection law, the chief justice slapped contempt cases against them. Shah then forced Sharif to appear before court and face trial -- the first time in Pakistan's history that a serving prime minister was made to do so. It was clear that Sharif would face disqualification from office if found guilty. The tenor of the chief justice made it apparent that he was not going to forgive Sharif for his disparaging remarks. The chief justice also sought Leghari's help to bring Sharif around.

Sharif was clearly caught on the wrong foot and at this stage looked as if he would be the one to go. There was talk of possible successors. Shabaz Sharif, the prime minister's brother and chief minister of Punjab, and Commerce Minister Ishaq Dar were said to be potential candidates. The cracks in the Government began to surface when Mehtab Abbasi, the chief minister of North West Frontier Province, suggested in a federal cabinet meeting that Sharif should resign to save the system from total collapse. The proposal stunned the prime minister. But he refused to bow out under pressure. The widespread belief among the members of the ruling party that the army, headed by General Jehangir Karamat, might not come to their aid further fuelled the fears of change.

It was then that Sharif began to make moves that would have done any chess grandmaster proud. He first gave the appearance of backing out under pressure from Karamat and allowed Shah to have his judicial appointees. Shah, believing Sharif to be weakening, moved in for what he thought was the kill. He turned the heat on the contempt cases. Sharif immediately requested Karamat to bring about a rapprochement before the situation turned nasty. Karamat was able to get him a week's breathing time when the chief justice agreed to postpone the crucial November 21 hearing in the contempt case. That was all Sharif needed.

The prime minister began working on Shah's weaknesses. When Shah was appointed in 1994 as chief justice, he had superseded several senior colleagues and was seen as former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's choice. That decision rankled senior serving judges. Shah compounded it by behaving in an autocratic manner. He rarely took his brother judges into confidence on crucial matters such as appointments. And his activist approach had few supporters. In the thick of his battle with Sharif, as many as eight of the 12 judges sent a letter to Leghari dissociating themselves from the stand-off between the chief justice and the Government.

Sharif, however, used the cease-fire brokered by the army chief to further the division within the apex judiciary. He achieved major success when the Baluchistan circuit bench of the Supreme Court suspended the chief justice form his post and called for a full bench hearing on a petition challenging the appointment of Shah as chief justice on the ground that he had superseded three senior judges. The Baluchistan court ruling was supported by the Peshawar bench of the Supreme Court. The move sharpened the division within the judiciary and put Shah on the defensive as he had the support of only four out of 12 judges. The rebellion, however, did not deter Shah from proceeding with the trial against the prime minister. He struck down the order of the two subordinate benches and suspended the rebel judges.

Yet Sharif appeared determined to stop the trial at any cost. The ruling Pakistan Muslim League brought in thousands of supporters from different parts of the country to protest against the chief justice outside the Supreme Court on November 28. The volatile mob broke the gate and ransacked the court premises. The judges retired to their chambers as the rowdy crowd hammered the doors of the courtroom. The attack was clearly premeditated as video records showed Senator Saifur Rehman, a close aide of the prime minister and MP, instigating the crowds. The Government, however, denied that any of the League leaders was involved in the violence. Shah blamed the Government for the incident and called for army protection.

With the parallel sets of judges vying for legitimacy, the Supreme Court was effectively paralysed. In his most vitriolic attack yet, President Leghari in a letter accused the prime minister of inciting the attack on the judiciary and warned that he would not allow the rule of the jungle. With Sharif enjoying the support of around 200 out of the 217 MPs, he wasn't going to cow down. In his television and radio speech to the nation soon after, Sharif blasted the President and the chief justice and alleged that they were conspiring against his Government. "I will not allow the people to become a victim of the conspiracy," Sharif declared. His supporters threatened to impeach the President if he acted out of line. The time was ripe for the army to step in as the two leaders publicly traded charges.

The end game began to unfold rapidly on December 2, when the two parallel courts met to deliver conflicting rulings after reconciliation efforts by the SCBA collapsed. It was a death knell to the independence of the country's highest judiciary. The judges were clearly divided on political lines, supporting rival parties in the power struggle. Shah fired the first salvo when, in a dramatic move, he struck down the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, restoring to the President the powers to dismiss a government. He also declared the prime minister guilty of contempt of court, paving the way for Sharif's disqualification from office. Although the majority rival bench under Justice Saeed Uzman immediately reversed the ruling and suspended the chief justice, Islamabad was in the grip of wild speculation that the President might dismiss the Government.

Sharif, meanwhile, advised the President to sack the chief justice. Leghari resigned, saying he could not sign such an illegal order. "Sharif was trying to grab all powers to become a dictator," he said. "He wanted to subjugate the judiciary and other institutions." The issue may have precipitated Leghari's decision to quit, but according to his close aides he had made up his mind some days earlier after it became apparent that the army was not prepared to fully back him and the chief justice in the struggle against the prime minister. The first indication came when the army leadership ignored Leghari's orders to provide security to the chief justice and other judges hearing contempt and corruption cases against the prime minister after the storming of the Supreme Court by Sharif's supporters. The inaction indicated that the generals were not prepared to clash with the prime minister.

If the generals decided to put their weight behind the prime minister, there were several factors that went into it. Top among them was that the economy was in a terrible shape, and a spell of military rule would only push it further down the slope. They also feared a political backlash if they removed a popular leader like Sharif who had won with a substantial majority not too long ago. Nor were powerful friends such as the US inclined to give their assent to army rule. The ouster of Leghari and Shah has calmed the situation. But most analysts agree that the political situation is far from stable. While Sharif has emerged supreme in the current round, he has to be careful not to behave in a dictatorial manner. Or he may meet the fate of his vanquished opponents.

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