IHT : Pakistan declares state of emergency

Pakistan declares state of emergency

By David Rohde | November 3, 2007

ISLAMABAD: President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency Saturday night, suspending the Constitution, blacking out all independent television news reports and filling the streets of the capital with police officers and soldiers.

The move appeared to be an effort by Musharraf, a general who is also Pakistan's military leader, to reassert his fading power in the face of growing opposition from the Supreme Court, civilian political parties and hard-line Islamists. The Supreme Court has been considering the legality of Musharraf's re-election in October as president, which opposition groups have said was improper.

Soon after independent television stations went off the air in the capital, just after 5 p.m., the police surrounded the home of the chief justice and the Supreme Court building, with justices still inside. The justices were ordered to sign a "provisional constitutional order" enabling the emergency decree, according to Western diplomats, with the government leaving implicit that any justices failing to do so would be dismissed.

At least 6 of the court's 11 justices gathered in the court and rejected the order, according to an aide to Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. By 9 p.m., Chaudhry and the other justices had gone home, surrounded by police officers and with the phone lines cut, witnesses and officials said.

Aitzaz Ahsan, a prominent lawyer who led protests against Musharraf this spring, was detained after saying that opposition groups would announce a schedule of nationwide strikes and protests on Monday. Before being detained, he accused Musharraf of "criminal flouting of the Constitution," adding that "the people and the lawyers cannot be suspended."

The emergency declaration came despite repeated calls from senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, not to do so. On Friday, the senior U.S. military commander in the Middle East, Admiral William Fallon, told Musharraf and his top generals in a meeting here that declaring emergency rule would jeopardize the extensive U.S. financial support for the Pakistani military.

Rice personally intervened twice in the past four months to try to keep Musharraf from imposing emergency rule, telephoning him at 2 a.m. Pakistan time in August. On Saturday, while traveling to Turkey for an Iraq security conference, she reinforced that message, saying, "I think it would be quite obvious that the United States wouldn't be supportive of extra-constitutional means."

Musharraf's order stated that attacks by militants have risen to "an unprecedented level of violent intensity" and now "pose a grave threat" to the people of Pakistan. The order accuses "some members of the judiciary" of "working at cross purposes" with the government by releasing some detained militants. It goes on to accuse the Supreme Court of "overstepping the limits of judicial authority" in a variety of areas, including economic policy.

But Pakistani analysts like Hasan Askari Rizvi, an expert on military affairs, said the order was an effort by Musharraf to maintain his own power, which he gained in October 1999 when he staged a bloodless coup.

"This is the first time Musharraf has brought in military rule to sustain himself in power," he said. "He felt threatened by the Supreme Court."

Chaudhry has been the focal point of the opposition to Musharraf. Supported by lawyers, judges and a wide public following, Chaudhry led a street-style political campaign against his summary dismissal earlier this year that helped fuel the growing popular sentiment against Musharraf.

The Supreme Court reinstated Chaudhry this summer, and in September the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Musharraf, saying he could run for re-election while still in uniform.

But the focus was again on Chaudhry last week as the deadline drew closer for a decision on the legality of Musharraf's re-election on Oct. 6 by the national Parliament and four provincial assemblies. Rumors were rife in Islamabad all week that the court might decide against the president or give a muddied verdict that would leave his position as president unclear.

Several lawyers and journalists after the declaration of emergency rule that they believed that the opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, left Pakistan on Thursday for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates after realizing that Musharraf was planning some form of martial law. But aides to Bhutto said that immediately after hearing of the emergency declaration Saturday, she made plans to fly back to Pakistan on Wednesday evening. Members of her political party condemned the emergency order.

Bhutto, who returned to Pakistan in mid-October under an arrangement brokered by the United States and Britain, warned the government on Wednesday that she was opposed to emergency rule. "If emergency is imposed, people will come out and resist it," she said.

She returned to Pakistan on Oct. 18 for the first time in eight years on the understanding that she would take part in elections expected early next year. The Bush administration hoped that Bhutto would bring a democratic face to Pakistan even as it continued under the rule of Musharraf, who has pledged to give up his military post after being sworn in for another presidential term on Nov. 15.