May 14th, 2008 by Amanda

The newly elected Pakistani government has been deadlocked over reinstatement of judges dismissed by President Pervez Musharaf last year. While both Nawaz Sharif of the PML-N and Asif Ali Zardari of PPP agree that the judiciary should be placed back on the bench, they disagree starkly on the methods to implement it. As PML-N members of the cabinet have submitted their resignation in protest to the majority PPP, Steve Clemons at The Washington Note says “the situation as it stands now strikes me as untenable.” He adds that this recent move by the PML-N “fundamentally problemitizes a power-sharing arrangement between two dominant parties with very different constituencies.”

The people of Pakistan question the role of Washington in their internal politics. Reuters reports that there is a “growing sense of disillusion hasn’t been helped by the United States energetic diplomacy,” that is considered by many to be “engineering Pakistan’s future by propping up Musharraf.” An opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune declares that to counter this image, “the United States must make clear, finally, that its goal is not to keep Musharraf in office but to help the civilian government survive and prosper.”

For a local perspective on U.S. Foreign Policy in Pakistan, read this article by The Daily Times of Lahore that talks about “Democracy: The US secretary said that it was a problem in Pakistan that people thought that the US had supported “the military government” without caring about democracy. She said that the US had always supported democracy and added that the US was now looking at what kind of assistance Pakistan might require.”

Posted in Judiciary, Pakistan, Political Parties, US foreign policy |