While the World Wasn’t Watching...

Pakistan Went Straight to Hell

Observers in the West, yours truly included, have been distracted by a series of shiny objects—Hillary! Obama! Tibet! Iraq!-- since Pakistan’s elections apparently put that country on the road to democracy by creating a parliamentary majority dominated by a coalition of the two main anti-Musharraf parties, the PPP and the PML-N.

While we were away, however, Benazir Bhutto’s widower and PPP co-chairman Asif Zardari has been working non-stop to remove his political rivals and solidify his place on top of the political heap—and make peace with Musharraf—at the expense of Pakistan’s democracy.

Zardari apparently sees himself as the rightful heir to the deal his wife had made with Washington—that the PPP would form a government after the election that would include Musharraf and his allies, exclude Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N, and enjoy US support.

The United States has not been idle, of course. Once again the United States has found itself in the position of ostentatiously calling for democracy overseas, then energetically undermining it when the results don’t yield the outcome it desired.

At the end of March, National Security Advisor John Negroponte and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Boucher rushed to Pakistan on an unscheduled visit, to meet with the key political players and, presumably, insert America’s guiding hand in Pakistan’s politics.

US has assisted and enabled—if not guided—Zardari’s critical move to reach out to the MQM, the gangsterish party that controls Karachi and holds the key to Musharraf’s political survival.

MQM is responsible for the rioting and murder that convulsed the Karachi yesterday—and provided the first sign that Musharraf and the United States see a road out of their dilemma by fomenting a political crisis, probably with the help of Asif Zardari.

Zardari correctly sees virtually every politician and political force more popular than him as an obstacle and threat to his objective of riding a Musharraf/US alliance to political domination of Pakistan.

That puts a great deal on his plate because the removal of Pervez Musharraf is extremely popular—polling at about 70%--and Asif Zardari himself is not very popular man.

As a result, Zardari’s been working overtime to discredit and marginalize more popular figures like the PPP Old Guard and the lawyer’s movement, led by respected barrister—and PPP member--Aitzaz Ahsan,who is the touchstone for courage and integrity in the battle to democratize Pakistan.

At the same time, Zardari has reached out to anybody less popular than he is, a remarkable slate of despised figures including President Pervez Musharraf, the PML-Q party that the PPP and PML-N routed in the parliamentary elections, the murderous MQM—and the United States--to cobble together a ruling bloc.

At first, Zardari’s moves were almost laughably self-serving .

Despite a pledge to restore the pre-November 3 judiciary (that Musharraf had removed in order to get an unconstitutional second term as president while still in uniform), Zardari eagerly availed himself of the existing courts to get the outstanding corruption and murder charges (relating to highly plausible accusations that he had connived at the murder of his brother-in-law—and Benazir Bhutto’s brother!— black sheep radical politician Mir Murtaza Bhutto) against him dismissed.

Wiping the slate clean with the help of the Musharraf judiciary let the media ironically describe Zardari, the man universally known as “Mr. 10%” for his grafting ways, as “the cleanest man in Pakistan”—and removed the last legal obstacle to Zardari running for parliament in a by-election from his wife’s safe constituency, entering parliament, and becoming Prime Minister.

Zardari promoted a cringe-inducing cult of personality surrounding Shaheed (martyr) Benazir Bhutto while presenting himself as the ordained heir to her sacred nation-saving mission.

He presided over a meeting of the newly-elected PPP members of parliament and, instead of briefing them on the party’s platform for the upcoming session, orchestrated a performance in which Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, a senior PPP official who had once disrespected Zardari while the latter was in prison, now allowed himself to be seated in a chair before the puzzled assembly to recant and acknowledge Zardari was now “my leader”.

Zardari then delayed the calling of parliament to give him a chance to sideline Makhdoom Amin Fahim, the respected functionary who, as head of the PPP organization that contested the election, was both the constitutional and logical choice to be Prime Minister.

Instead, Zardari launched a whispering campaign against Fahim, accusing him of disloyally holding secret meetings with Musharraf—an accusation Fahim indignantly denied. The accusations reached a surreal pitch—and revealed Zardari’s anxiety about his legitimacy as Bhutto’s political heir—as Zardari’s creatures spread the allegation that Fahim had rushed off to meet Musharraf after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.

Fahim, of course, had been at Benazir Bhutto’s side in the Land Rover when she was assassinated-- while Zardari was out of the country.

Zardari also addressed the threat from the lawyer’s movement led by Aitzaz Ahsan, flying in the face of history to dismiss the significance of the lawyer’s movement—which had stood up to Musharraf’s extra-legal maneuvers since March of 2007, gutted his popularity, and created the political crisis that forced him to allow Bhutto (and Zardari) and Sharif to return to Pakistan from exile to contest the elections.

Instead, Zardari claimed, the victory of democratic forces in Pakistan was the result of the martyrdom of his wife—and he dismissed lawyers as corrupt and self-serving.

Another meeting, this time of the PPP central committee, was transformed into a prolonged exhibition of Zardari’s pathological self-regard and tender pride as he discussed his resistance to reinstating the pre-November 3 judges as he had promised the PML-N and Nawaz Sharif:

Zardari said these were the same judges who had earlier taken oath under the PCO and validated the military rule. Referring to his jail life, a source quoted him as saying that he was let down by these judges, who had even refused to release him on parole to attend the funeral of his nephew. He said he was allowed only a two-hour parole despite Farooq H Naek's pleading before the same judges.

He said the then Justice Wajihuddin Ahmed had also refused him a parole. He termed the same judiciary biased, which he said was responsible for his eight years in jail. Party sources reported that Asif Ali Zardari was quite emotional while speaking on the judges' issue. One source said he talked of the restoration of the judges but linked it to a constitutional package. He said the party was interested in the independence of the judiciary and not in personalities.

A party leader said he was disappointed to hear what he termed the charge-sheet issued by the PPP co-chairperson against the deposed judges. According to him, almost 60 per cent of the co-chairman's speech was on Aitzaz Ahsan and the judges.

Zardari also went out of his way to widen a rift between himself and Aitzaz Ahsan.

Aitzaz Ahsan, who sought the restoration of the deposed judges, told the meeting that it would be in the interest of the party to get the judges restored.

Zardari, according to sources, came hard on the issue of the judges’ restoration. According to one source, Zardari snubbed the widely-respected lawyer leader and said he knew the worth of the judges whose restoration was being sought by the lawyers' community.

Zardari also purportedly claimed he feared a return to legal jeopardy for himself if the pre-November 3 judiciary was restored and perhaps decided to revisit the charges that the Musharraf judiciary had so complaisantly dismissed.

In my opinion, a more likely explanation for Zardari’s widely reported insistence on forgoing automatic restoration of the judiciary, replacing it with parliamentary review and control over judicial re-appointments, and under any and all scenarios implementing a “minus one” arrangement that would at the very least block the return of Supreme Court justice and national hero Iftikhar Chaudhry to his original eminence, is that Zardari desires a cowed and compliant judiciary that will not only decline to take the initiative in challenging the Musharraf presidency--it will also decline to dismiss the criminal cases that continue to hamstring Zardari’s main political rival, Nawaz Sharif.

After Amin Fahim capitulated and a more tractable PPP functionary, Yousaf Raza Gillani---regarded by many as merely a place-holder until Zardari entered parliament and became eligible for the PM slot-- had finally been elevated to the prime ministership, progressive Pakistani opinion was promptly horrified by a series of events.

Without consulting the coalition partners, Gillani called for and obtained a vote of confidence from Musharraf’s PML-Q—an indication that Zardari was engaged in covert dealings with the despised faction.

Zardari also unilaterally reached out to the MQM, a gangsterish political outfit that runs Karachi, has been an indispensable prop of Musharraf, and is despised by the PPP rank-and-file both for as status as the PPP’s bitter rival in Sindh and for its acts of mayhem and murder against PPP members.

Then Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, the very person who had groveled so gratifyingly before Zardari in the meeting of PPP parliamentarians and had been rewarded with the position of Minister of Defense in the new government, reportedly praised Musharraf as “a national asset”, apparently endorsing Musharraf as the indispensable ATM through which American aid must flow.

It became clear Zardari was assembling an alternative coalition of Musharraf allies against the day that Nawaz Sharif pulled the PML-N out of the coalition.

And it also became clear that PML-N withdrawal was inevitable because Zardari was prepared to break the bargain that had sealed the PPP-PML-N coalition: restoration of the pre-November 3 judiciary within thirty days of the formation of the federal government, a move that would almost certainly involve in the removal of Musharraf and a decoupling from the United States on security matters.

If the PML-N withdrew from the coalition, Nawaz Sharif would become the logical focus of the anti-Zardari forces, which would probably include significant elements of the PPP old guard and supporters of the lawyer’s movement as well as his own party—in other words, the three most popular forces in the country.

Sharif—who perhaps had, with an excess of complacency, anticipated that Zardari’s venality and unpopularity would easily redound to the political benefit of the PML-N—is probably now calculating rather anxiously whether Zardari is going to try to neutralize him politically (Gillani’s most salient qualification as prime minister was perhaps that he had defeated Sharif in an election in the 1990s), legally (unlike Zardari, Sharif still has some legal vulnerabilities relating to his previous stint in power) or worse.

I’m not the only one who thinks Nawaz Sharif has to watch his back.

However, the most pressing priority for Musharraf and Zardari is discrediting the lawyers’ movement to restore the judiciary.

The lawyers have promised the embarrassment of renewed nationwide agitation—agitation that would force Zardari to take the profoundly unpopular position of standing with Musharraf against the lawyers--if the judiciary is not restored within thirty days of the formation of the coalition government, as per the Murree Declaration negotiated between Zardari and Sharif in March.

In an interesting illustration of what can happen to a vaguely worded agreement when bad faith is the order of the day, Nawaz Sharif believes that the 30 day clock began ticking when the new National Assembly was sworn in on March 17. Most people date the kickoff to March 25 , when the new prime minister was sworn in. But the PPP’s Rehman Malik, who has jurisdiction over the matter in his role as Adviser to the Prime Minister on Interior,doesn’t even pretend he’s not stalling: he says the clock starts when the cabinet is sworn in—which hasn’t happened yet.

April 16, April 24, whenever, the lawyers are already getting ready to hit the bricks again.

In this unsettled environment, with Musharraf, Zardari, and the PPP digging in to block the lawyers, a truly remarkable event occurred on April 8: Dr. Sher Afgan Niazi, the parliamentary affairs minister in the previous government responsible for some of the more tortured legal justification for Musharraf’s rule, was apparently attacked in Lahore by a gang of...lawyers.

Aitzaz Ahsan went to the scene and tried unsuccessfully to calm the crowd.

Instead, the mob pelted Sher Afgan with tomatoes and worse, invaded the ambulance that was trying to drive him away, threw away the ignition key, and pounded him with shoes and shattered the windows as Good Samaritans tried to push the ambulance down the street.

The old man’s ordeal was captured on TV cameras and broadcast to a horrified nation.

Afgan, previously a figure of amused contempt, attracted widespread pity.

As for the lawyers, it was claimed that they had forfeited their claim on the nation’s sympathy.

A mortified Aitzaz Ahsan announced his resignation as head of the Supreme Court Bar Association—the prestigious pulpit from which he had championed the cause of the pre-November 3 judiciary.

Sher Afghan, who was not seriously hurt, returned to his home town of Mianwali, which showered him with rose petals, burned tires on the main roads, blocked the train tracks, held a general strike, and trashed the law offices of his local opponents, all in his honor.

Sher Afghan proclaimed his undying loyalty to Musharraf as the man who brought democracy back to Pakistan and accused the PML-N and the fundamentalist party Jamaat-e-Islami of orchestrating the attack.

Almost immediately suspicions of a government conspiracy began bubbling up.

The PML-N’s parliamentary leader, Makhdoom Javed Hashmi offered accusations of his own :

What happened with Dr Sher Afgan Niazi,it is condemnable, he said "My servants had recognized those who had mistreated Dr Sher Afgan Niazi. They are intelligence agencies personnel. This is all brain child of agencies, he added.

The pro-government Daily Times obliged conspiracy theorists with a ham-fisted editorial depicting the lawyers as an out-of-control creature of the media now ready to be poked back in its cage, while significantly praising the PPP:

The power that the lawyers’ movement felt was based on the aggression of the bars, but the courage of its leadership to challenge and threaten the court and government came from the profile they had acquired on the TV channels. (The channels tended to ignore the early manifestation of violence among the lawyers as a sop to a growing solidarity between the two.) After the 2008 elections, however unfortunately and incorrectly, most of the channels developed a consensus that the mandate of the people was not in favour of the parties that won but the restoration of the judges and the ouster of President Musharraf. The two mainstream parties registered this with a slight variation of response. The PMLN embraced the new situation completely and began to reap media dividends; the PPP felt that it was being pressured too much by the “countdowns” handed down by the lawyers and sought a middle ground.

Another pro-Musharraf outlet, the Pakistan Observer, eagerly entitled its editorial “Is this the Beginning of the End? “(for the lawyers’ movement, that is), opining:

All this shows that the situation was moving in the wrong direction and it is time that the lawyers’ movement and the issue of restoration of judges is brought to a swift closure. Advisor to Prime Minister on Interior Rehman Malik has already ordered an inquiry, which would fix the responsibility, but it is quite obvious that those behind the unfortunate incident were none else but black-coat wearing lawyers.

Propaganda this crude and arrogantly blatant has all the marks of the Pakistan intelligence services, so I’m inclined to agree with the people who see the attack on Sher Afgan as an initial salvo in the campaign to discredit the lawyers and keep Musharraf in power.

Commenters on Pakistan political comment boards pointed out that it didn’t make sense that the lawyer’s movement, which had showed admirable restraint over the last year in the face of tear gas and baton charges, somehow had lost its discipline at the moment of its greatest triumph.

Also, during this prolonged, agonizing, and televised incident only one policeman showed up, an indication that this incident was allowed to happen. The Punjab government, it was pointed out, is still in the hands of the pro-Musharraf PML-Q.

The drift of the accusations seems to be that the attack was orchestrated by pro-Musharraf elements to discredit the lawyer’s movement and give Musharraf (and, many posited, Zardari as his silent partner) a pretext for not heeding its demand to restore the pre-November 3 judiciary.

Aitzaz Ahsan subsequently decided that the beating of Sher Afgan had actually been a government provocation. He withdrew his resignation and described the chaos in Lahore at a press conference:

"I came to know about Sher Afgan incident on Tuesday evening through media. I rushed there even at the risk of my life. But no government functionary turned up. Police did not stop the demonstrators despite my request. I tried to talk through megaphone from balcony. Only 40 per cent lawyers were found present there and the remaining were some other people. I appealed to lawyers to disperse and they did so. But the other people remained there.

He further said "I asked the police officers present over there to call in more contingent of police but it was not done so. I asked police officers to call police van and bring it close to door so that Sher Afgan could be pulled out from there. But police did not do so. I asked the police officers to remove a plain clothed man but they told he was a policeman. I knew he was not policeman and was some terrorist.

When I brought out Sher Afgan then police disappeared. When I took Afgan inside van, we came to know driver of the van was not there. People in plain clothes were found involved in the acts of sabotage. My friends and I tried to rescue Dr Sher Afgan even at the risk of our lives. But all happened under a planned conspiracy. People in plain clothes subjected Dr Afgan to violence".


Things quickly got worse.

The theatrical roughing up of Sher Afghan by pretend “lawyers” was followed up by the genuine murder of real lawyers in Karachi by the MQM.

Downtown Karachi was brought to a standstill by a bizarre and bloody and much more serious incident—another “lawyers riot”—in this case “lawyers” affiliated with the MQM claiming they were attacked while peacefully but rather inexplicably protesting the insult to Sher Afgan, who hails from a distant town in Punjab, not Sindh.

The MQM “lawyers” retaliated by setting fire to an office building and killing five lawyers within. Subsequent rioting and arson paralyzed the heart of Karachi and claimed several more lives.

Pakistan’s News editorialized:

One is the strange absence of any administrative authority in Karachi...and Lahore, where police and authorities had hours to mobilize themselves and mount a rescue operation to release Dr Afgan and other hostages. Why did it become necessary for Aitzaz Ahsan to intervene? Why did police not use force when no party or group had owned the siege? Why were large parts of Karachi engulfed in flames after a minor clash between lawyers? Whose interests are being served by this chain of tragic events and who is the target? Likewise everyone must see who, if anyone, is benefiting from the turmoil.

The good news is, following the initial dismay of the Sher Afghan incident and Aitzaz Ahsan’s abrupt if temporary resignation, the legal community and educated opinion have closed ranks, repudiated claims that the lawyers’ movement is out of control, and pressed forward with the agenda of complete restoration of the pre-November 3 judiciary.

The bad news is, these are times of extraordinary danger for the more progressive forces in Pakistan politics.

With the entry of the PPP into the government, international attention has turned away from Pakistan.

Musharraf has the opportunity to put paid to the lawyers’ movement to restore the judiciary with the right combination of violence, slander, American support, MQM terrorism, and political cover from Zardari.

After the shock of the Sher Afghan incident, Aitzaz Ahsan must be viewing his future with a combination of determination and deep disquiet.

Again, from The Post’s report on his press conference:

Aitzaz Ahsan said that he will contest by-elections from constituency NA-55, if Pakistan People's Party (PPP) issued him the ticket. He said that PPP and Asif Ali Zardari have taken bold steps but there is a hidden power that is intriguing against the democracy.

Dark, dark days, indeed.

Pakistan: It’s Not Over Yet

Update to the Update:

I see from Jim Lobe that Hussein Haqqani, the PPP’s flack-in-residence at Boston University, its spokesman to Capitol Hill, and designated quotemeister to the U.S. media, unveiled the current party position in the Wall Street Journal:

The newspaper also published a column by Hussein Haqqani - an adviser to the late PPP leader, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto - demanding that Musharraf "work out an honorable exit or a workable compromise with the opposition."

That, to me, is a sign that the PPP wants to abandon its promise to work with Musharraf and accommodate the PML-N by calling for his ouster instead, even if Haqqan and Zardari are cautiously hesitating to make an categorical demand for Musharraf to stand down while the Bush administration is still committed to supporting Musharraf.

The PPP wants to swim with the political tide in Pakistan instead of bending to pressure from Washington.

So it is moving to reject Washington’s Three No policy—no reform of the judiciary, no resignation of Musharraf, and no alliance with the PML-N.

And Asif Zardari wants to turn his back on the bargain Washington made with Benazir Bhutto—our backing in return for her promise to enter a coalition with Musharraf —that brought his wife back to Pakistan and vaulted him to political power.

So it looks like Zardari decided to screw Washington instead of Pakistan.

If so, good for him!

Lobe’s article also has a good roundup of the newly vocal and growing Mush Must Go chorus in the U.S. foreign policy sphere.

Update:

Pakistan’s The News reports that the PPP and the PML-N have agreed to form a coalition government.

The fate of the judiciary and Musharraf have not been clearly addressed, so it’s not clear if this is a lasting coalition or a superficial and tactical alliance.

According to The News:

Nawaz Sharif maintained that there is no difference in the two parties on the restoration of the deposed judges.

“We accept the mandate of PPP with an open heart and wish that PPP complete its five year term,” he said, adding, “struggle for restoration of judiciary will continue and CoD [Charter of Democracy] will also be followed.”

PPP Co-Chairman, Asif Zardari said PPP and PML-N have decided to work together for democracy. However, he said, some of the matter are yet to be decided by the parties.

It would surprise me if the PML-N continues in the coalition if Musharraf remains in the presidency and the pre-November 3 judiciary is not restored.

It’s noteworthy that Asif Zardari and the PPP have taken a step away from the United States by pursuing a coalition with the PML-N.

It looks like Zardari is trying to bend U.S. support to Pakistani political realities.

Perhaps he’ll even try to persuade Washington to abandon its support of Musharraf.

Perhaps that's the assurance he gave to Sharif in order to bring the PML-N into the coalition.

And Sharif, afraid that he would be left standing on the sidelines if the PPP won the glory of driving Musharraf from office, cautiously decided to enter the coalition with the intention of opting out later if the PPP falters in its anti-Musharraf fervor.

Original post below

Nawaz Sharif sees no reason to follow Asif Zardari and the PPP into a dead end.

Sharif, leader of the opposition PML-N, is saying his demand that the pre-November 3 judiciary be restored—which would most likely directly lead to the invalidation of Musharraf’s presidential election—is non-negotiable.

With the provincial assemblies that vote on the president now dominated by the opposition (except in Balochistan, where Musharraf’s PML-Q managed to cling to the lead spot), any do-over of the presidential election would certainly lead to Musharraf’s departure.

Musharraf’s resignation is desired by about 75% of Pakistanis, according to the IRI poll.

An independent judiciary (close to but not quite “restoration of the pre-November 3 judiciary”) was supported to 85% of respondents in the Terror Free Tomorrow (hereinafter TFT) poll .

One might be tempted to regard the PML-N’s uncompromising stance as posturing during the negotiations to form a coalition government.

But taking a junior position in a PPP-led coalition and, in effect, expending his political capital to help the PPP succeed in governing Pakistan doesn’t do a lot for Sharif.

Sharif has more to gain if he can gain control of Punjab province, where the PML-N won the plurality of seats, without having to kowtow to the PPP.

Given his party’s strong showing in the provincial elections held as part of the national assembly elections on February 18), where the PML-N won 102 Punjab seats to 77 for the PPP and 64 for the PML-Q, that goal might be in reach.

At the national level, Sharif has given every indication that a) he’s ready for a long-haul fight for power and b) he saw what Benazir Bhutto started to do with the PPP and wants to build a national, issue-oriented party and not just a Punjab powerhouse.

In this context, insisting on restoration of the judiciary isn’t a quixotic crusade or, as the US media misleadingly paints it, symptomatic of Sharif’s thirst for revenge against the guy who removed him from office in 1999.

It’s smart politics.

And as far as I can see, Nawaz Sharif is a pretty smart guy.

So I don’t expect him to abandon his confrontational stance.

And where does this leave Asif Zardari and the PPP?

Behind the political 8-ball.

The PPP is unwilling to insist on Musharraf’s ouster or the restoration of the judiciary.

Instead, it is exploring alternatives to the PML-N in alliances with the thuggish MQM (which controls Karachi) and those electoral remnants of the despised PML-Q who have supposedly been purified in the flames of the February 18 election and are worthy of admission into the PPP.

In other words, the PPP is sliding into alliance with Musharraf, the PML-Q, and the MQM: three of the least popular forces in Pakistani politics.

Excuse me.

I forgot the fourth and least popular force in Pakistan politics (20% according to TFT): the United States.

If the PPP compromises with Musharraf, the (completely accurate) rumblings of outrage that Asif Zardari sold out Pakistan for the sake of the secret PPP+Musharraf power sharing deal demanded by the United States will only increase.

Pardon me.

That puts the PPP on the wrong side of the fifth and even less popular issue (9% approval according to TFT) in Pakistan: supporting the US/Musharraf War on Terror military campaign against the al Qaeda, Taleban, and the Pashtuns in West Pakistan.

With the PPP ready to embrace this armful of political anvils, it doesn’t look like genius for the PML-N to hold back.

It looks like common sense.

If the PPP-led coalition allows Musharraf to stay in the presidency, doesn’t restore the pre-November 3 judiciary, and collapses into bickering and impotence, producing a hung parliament, then Musharraf can dissolve parliament and call for new elections, perhaps even a few months from now.

Then the PPP would be running on a platform of failure, ignoble compromise, and squandered sacrifice...against the PML-N, which dominates Punjab, with its share of over half of the seats in the National Assembly and has consolidated its position as leader of the national middle class with its popular stance on Musharraf and the judiciary.

The next salvo in Pakistan’s political battle may be March 7.

According to Dawn :

LAHORE, Feb 20: Supporters of Aitzaz Ahsan, the detained president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, defied police restrictions and carried him on their shoulders outside his Zaman Park residence.Talking to the media, Mr Ahsan reiterated his call for restoration of deposed judges by March 7. “Otherwise we will hold a long march and gather in Islamabad from all over the country,” he said.

He said lawyers would not settle for anything less than the reinstatement of deposed judges and they were ready to negotiate with all political parties for the purpose. “But I want to make one thing clear. That we have a one-point agenda: restoration of all deposed judges,” he added....He said the PPP could not ignore the issue of reviving the pre-emergency judiciary because Benazir Bhutto herself had declared Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry as the “real” chief justice of Pakistan.

A Los Angeles Times profile gives an idea of Ahsan’s national stature:

A celebrated lawyer, Ahsan was shut away in jail and then in his home here for speaking out against Musharraf's six-week emergency rule late last year and for defending Pakistan's popular chief justice, whom the president had summarily dismissed.The crackdown on Ahsan turned this distinguished, articulate man into a national hero, a prisoner of conscience whose confinement, in the eyes of many, symbolized the arrogance and highhandedness of Musharraf's rule.

If you don’t think lawyer militancy and restoration of the judiciary aren’t potential minefields for the PPP, consider this:

Ahsan is not just one of the most popular and respected people in Pakistan.

He’s also a PPP politician whose name was floated as a possible consensus prime minister.

And three weeks from now he could be leading a protest march against a PPP-led coalition government.

Like I said, it’s not over yet.