Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's widower and a major leader in Pakistan's civilian government, announced today that the parliament will initiate impeachment proceedings against President Pervez Musharraf. He calls it "good news for democracy," and I'm inclined to agree. In the matter of firing high judges alone, civilians should hold Musharraf accountable. And with his popularity having bottomed out a long time ago, Pakistan desperately needs some change.

Now, the civilians - ie, Bhutto's PPP and Nawaz Sharif's PML-N - have been discussing impeachment and other such measures since the parliamentary elections nearly six months ago. So in a way I'm surprised they're moving forward with it at this particular moment. Al Jazeera (see link above) suggests that the main factor is simply that the two major parties finally reached an agreement, and feel that they have the votes in parliament (a two-thirds majority is required) to pull it off.

The New York Times suggest that Zardari and Sharif are making moves because they feel their own survival is at stake:

The sudden cohesion of the coalition and the decision to try to remove Mr. Musharraf comes against the backdrop of a serious economic crisis in the country, a surging Taliban insurgency and popular sentiment that the four-month-old government has failed to deal with the urgent problems facing the country.

It appeared that the two leaders found that the only way they could keep the coalition intact was to attack Mr. Musharraf, something Mr. Zardari had been reluctant to do.

Moving forward, everyone seems to agree that this is a major threat to Musharraf. He's cancelled a planned trip to Beijing. He's said in the past that he'd rather resign than face impeachment, and the New York Times says that Zardari and Sharif, by holding a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly prior to the beginning of full-blown hearings, may be trying to offer Musharraf a way to step down painlessly. Musharraf is apparently meeting with his lawyer today.

But the civilians appear determined to make it stick. Musharraf will face a vote of no confidence not only at the national but also the provincial level, and the opposition is also considering reinstating the judges whose firings represent a major piece of the current crisis. As for Musharraf, he could play the risky gambit of dissolving parliament, but he needs the military's backing to do so, and under new leadership their loyalties could swing more to the other side.

Several questions come out of this situation: How will the "War on Terror" in Pakistan go differently if the civilians, who favor negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban, take more control? How will US-Pakistan relations change?

And more importantly, how come the Pakistanis can get it together to impeach a corrupt president who fires top judicial officials for his own personal and partisan gain, but we can't?




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