Pakistan: will march be the final straw?

So, you’re a nuclear-armed nation with a massive Muslim extremist insurgency that’s causing the world’s only superpower a huge headache across your border. You have a president who’s never faced a popular vote, and who’s just banned his main – and pretty popular – opponent from elected office.

Your economy’s tanking, your capital’s pretty much deserted since a series of suicide bombings, and about three hours’ drive to its north, sharia law’s being implemented by the Muslim radicals – still remember them from earlier on in this? What do you need now?

Obviously, a thousands-strong march of angry lawyers through the country. That is the argument of the government, as they have moved, with typical clumsiness, to stop the huge, days-long protest march that was meant to get under way today from Quetta to the capital. There have been arrests – 300 of them – and the imposition of “144” – a section of the law enforcement code that bans gatherings.

 
But the motivation here is, as ever with the dysfunctional elite that consistently fails to provide Pakistan with the calm focused leadership it needs, political. The march is to demand the reinstatement of the supreme court judges removed by the previous president – army chief and dictator, Pervez Musharraf.

The new president, Asif Ali Zardari, said he’d reassess the rollback of democracy that Mr Musharraf imposed. He hasn’t really yet. He probably won’t.

The march will probably get out of hand. It’s been planned for too long not to. The big question now is, with the country never closer to the collapse that it’s been doing the two-step with now for about two years, whether these promised four days of protest and crackdown will be the final straw that convinces Pakistan’s army to step in.

That’s a euphemism for a coup. Now re-read the first paragraph.

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