Crackdown after crackdown

If anyone thought things could not get worse in Pakistan after the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team last week, they are about to be sorely disabused. A country paralysed by weak government, enfeebled by recession, ceding territory to Islamic militants, is about to be thrown into a political crisis. The conflict does not pit the military versus the government, but one civilian leader against another. Barely a year old, Pakistan's latest attempt at democratic government is being tested as never before.

On the face of it, Pakistan's president and Benazir Bhutto's widower bears 90% of the blame. Asif Ali Zardari has twice reneged on deals with his former coalition partner Nawaz Sharif to restore the chief justice Iftikhar Chaudry, whose ousting proved the downfall of Pakistan's last military ruler. Mr Zardari is using all the tools of oppression against Mr Sharif that General Pervez Musharraf used against his family when Ms Bhutto was alive and in opposition. The president has forced both Mr Sharif and his brother Shabhaz out of power in their home base, the Punjab, installing a loyalist governor in their stead. Yesterday he banned protests (using an instrument untouched since British rule) and arrested hundreds of opposition members. All this to stop a rally of lawyers gathering in Islamabad on the very vehicle - the restoration of Mr Chaudry - which Mr Zardari rode to power last year.

It is a beguilingly simple story. The victim of military rulers has now become the victimiser. But it is not the whole truth. Each time Mr Sharif has been offered a compromise, he has made the restoration of the chief justice a condition of his support for the restoration of democratic government. The real question is why? Is it, as he claims, the principle of the rule of law, or is he acting out of a desire to throw all the political dice in the air, in the hope that when they land, a Sharif rather than a Bhutto will be back in power? There are less dramatic ways to restore the chief justice. Fifty-four of the original 62 judges sacked by Mr Musharraf when he declared a state of emergency 16 months ago, are back in their jobs. So the crisis is about six judges, of whom Mr Chaudry is one.

Mr Sharif called to bring down a democratically elected government in a speech in a madrassa where Mr Zardari could not have shown his face and emerged alive. In his interview with the Guardian today, Mr Sharif calls the government an elective dictatorship. Does Mr Sharif care so deeply about the rule of law? His past performance as prime minister does not bear this out. Or is he a rightwing politician toying with the very forces of political Islam that Pakistan is trying, and failing, to contain?