Pakistan Crisis Resolved, Chief Judge to Be Re-Instated

It looks like the political crisis in Pakistan has come to an end (or at least a low-ebb), as former Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry will be reinstated as once-again Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. In addition, the Pakistan People’s Party has indicated that it will revisit the ruling from last month that barred PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif and his brother from running for office. Thus, Sharif has called off his protest march and all is back to normal. On the narrow merits of the issue, it not only seems like a good thing to see this crisis brought to an end, but re-instating the justice seems like the correct thing to do. The judge got fired by military dictator Pervez Musharraf for the “crime” of standing up for the rule of law, and it was Chaudhry’s firing that launched the wave of protests that brought civilian rule back to Pakistan. My understanding, however, is that the protests were never really about the Justice Chaudhry as such. Rather, there was a hope on the part of Sharif to ride this issue back into power, which he seems to have given up on for now.

The larger background situation, I would say, is that the same economic problems that pose severe political problems for incumbents in well-established democracies (ask Gordon Brown) pose much more severe problems for incumbents in regimes that lack that kind of entrenched consensus. It was Pakistan over the weekend, but I imagine this won’t be the last transitional country to be wracked by protests over the course of 2009.