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Pakistan parties form coalition
22/02/2008 07:24 - (SA)
Islamabad - Pakistan's two main opposition parties agreed on Thursday to form a coalition government after winning elections, dealing a major blow to President Pervez Musharraf's hopes of political survival.
The widower of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and ex-premier Nawaz Sharif said they would "strengthen Pakistan together" after they ousted Musharraf's allies in Monday's parliamentary polls.
"We have agreed on a common agenda. We will work together to form the government in the centre and in the provinces," Sharif told a joint news conference after talks with Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zardari.
The move brings them closer to the two-thirds majority they would need to seek Musharraf's impeachment, leaving him in the most precarious position since he seized power in a 1999 coup.
"In principle, we have agreed to stay together. We intend to strengthen Pakistan together," said Zardari, whose Pakistan People's Party (PPP) is set to be the biggest party in the new parliament, followed by Sharif's.
He said there were still "a lot of grounds to cover" between the two parties. Questions remain over whether the coalition will seek Musharraf's immediate ouster, and about who would serve as premier.
Zardari has provisionally ruled himself out and neither he nor Sharif is eligible because they are not MPs. Both, though, could contest by-elections due in the coming months.
But Sharif said they had overcome their differences over his demands for the immediate restoration of Pakistan's chief justice, whom Musharraf sacked in November, saying they would work on the issue in parliament.
Musharraf's rule was 'illegal and unconstitutional'
The coalition's first move in government would be to seek a UN investigation "into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto" in a suicide attack in December, Zardari said.
The announcement of the coalition comes despite what party officials said were efforts by Musharraf to try to divide Zardari and Sharif and persuade Bhutto's husband to form a coalition with the president's allies.
Sharif earlier told hundreds of protesting lawyers outside deposed chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry's Islamabad home - where the judge remains under house arrest - that Musharraf's rule was "illegal and unconstitutional".
Police fired teargas at lawyers calling for the restoration of Chaudhry in the southern city of Karachi. Thousands more demonstrated elsewhere.
Chaudhry, who was sacked by Musharraf under emergency rule in November, said in a telephone address to the lawyers in Karachi that there was no constitutional hurdle to judges getting their jobs back.
"I was deposed by an executive order and I can be restored by an executive order. There is no need of two-thirds majority of the parliament," said Chaudhry.
If Chaudhry gets his job back he could overturn Musharraf's controversial victory in a presidential election in October and oust him as president.
Musharraf has rejected calls to quit in the wake of his allies' electoral defeat. He has been backed for most of his time in office by the United States as a key ally against Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
- AFP
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