Pakistan's top court rejected Friday a last-ditch appeal filed by the
prime minister against a looming contempt charge, paving the way for a
case that could plunge the nuclear-armed country into political turmoil.
The
Supreme Court is demanding that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani
reopen corruption proceedings against President Asif Ali Zardari. Gilani
is refusing, arguing that Zardari, who also heads the ruling party of
which the prime minister is a member, has immunity from prosecution
while in office.
Gilani could be sentenced to prison for six
months and lose his job if found guilty of contempt. This would likely
be a destabilizing and drawn out process that could last months.
Since
January, the case has consumed Pakistan's highly polarized political
and media elite, deflecting attention from what many say are existential
threats to the country like an ailing economy and a violent Islamist
insurgency that shows little sign of ebbing.
Futher adding to
Pakistan's troubles, relations between Islamabad and a vital donor, the
United States, are at a low ebb after U.S. aircraft killed 24 Pakistani
soldiers on the Afghan border last November, prompting Pakistan to close
its border to U.S. and NATO supplies heading for Afghanistan.
Last
week, the court ruled that Gilani would be charged with contempt next
Monday. His lawyer appealed the decision but Chief Justice Iftikar
Mohammad Chaudry rejected the petition on Friday.
"Our appeal has
been dismissed, and as a result the prime minister will be charged with
contempt of court on the 13th," Gilani's lawyer, Aitzaz Ahsan, told
reporters outside the court. "God willing, on Monday he will appear."
The
graft case against Zardari relates to kickbacks that he and his late
wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, allegedly received from
Swiss companies when Bhutto was in power in the 1990s. They were found
guilty in absentia in a Swiss court in 2003.
Zardari appealed, but
Swiss prosecutors ended up dropping the case after the Pakistani
parliament passed a bill giving the president and others immunity from
old corruption cases that many agreed were politically motivated.
The
Pakistani Supreme Court ruled the bill unconstitutional in 2009,
triggering the slow moving process against the president and prime
minister.
Most legal experts think Zardari would be in no
immediate danger even if Gilani does as the court has demanded and
writes a letter to Swiss authorities asking that they open the case
against the president.
Last year, a Swiss prosecutor told the
media that Geneva couldn't bring proceedings against Zardari because
there he also has immunity as president of another nation. Doubts have
also been raised over the statute of limitations of the 1990s case.
But
having the prime minister initiate graft proceedings would carry a
heavy political price for the president in a year when elections are
likely to be held. Zardari himself has said the government would never
write the letter. His supporters say the Supreme Court is intent on
ousting him, allegedly with the consent of the powerful army, which is
widely believed to want to see Zardari out of office.
Meanwhile, a
separate Supreme Court commission ordered a Pakistani-American
businessman living abroad to testify through a video link in another
case threatening the Zardari government, a lawyer involved in the probe
said.
The order gives fresh life to an inquiry that had seemed to
be losing steam after its chief witness refused to travel to Pakistan,
citing security threats.
Mansoor Ijaz, the U.S. national, has
claimed to have delivered an unsigned memo to Adm. Mike Mullen, the top
U.S. military officer at the time. The memo asks Washington to help stop
a supposed military coup in the aftermath of the U.S. raid that killed
al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden.
The memo enraged the Pakistani army.
Ijaz
has alleged that he did the job on instructions from the former
Pakistani ambassador to Washington, Hussain Haqqani. Haqqani resigned in
the wake of the scandal, but both he and the government have denied any
connection to the letter.
Haqqani's lawyer Zahid Bukhari said the
commission decided in a Thursday hearing to send a judge to travel to
London and make arrangements for the video conference scheduled for Feb
22. AP
