White House supports civilian rule in Pakistan

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

WASHINGTON: The White House has also backed the democratic set-up in Pakistan, saying that it expects Pakistani leaders to preserve civilian rule in the country.

On the second day in a row, the US State Department also emphasised its commitment to enhancing the capacity of the civilian government in Islamabad.

“We believe that the government of Pakistan is committed to democracy and to the preservation of civilian leadership, obviously which we believe is tremendously important,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.

“We support civilian government in Pakistan. We are working with Pakistan to increase the capacity of this government, the performance of this government. It will be important for a civilian government to demonstrate its value to the Pakistani people,” said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley who had expressed similar sentiments on Thursday as well.

Both reactions followed reports in the US media of an imminent military coup or dislodging of the present government in Pakistan.

The State Department official noted that Pakistani people had “made clear that they prefer civilian government to dictatorship”. But he also explained that the US would not interfere in any political change in Pakistan, as “who ultimately runs that civilian government, that’s a matter for the Pakistani people” to decide.

This seems to corroborate a Washington Post report that US officials were bracing themselves for the possibility that Pakistan might soon have a new civilian government that would replace President Asif Ali Zardari and his prime minister.

“There’s a fair degree of disarray,” one Obama official told the Post. “The government can’t really handle the crisis of flood, and there’s lots of political jockeying” as government and opposition figures look for advantage in a potential new line-up.

US officials, who spoke to the Post, indicated that the Obama administration had begun to contemplate the effects of a change, engineered through Mr Zardari’s resignation as head of his political party, the dissolution of the current coalition government, or a call for new elections under the Pakistani constitution.

The officials, however, rejected the possibility of an overt action by the military. “Some suggested that a new, constitutionally-approved government that was more competent and popular, and had strong military backing, might be better positioned to support US policies,” the Post reported.

The newspaper, however, pointed out that no US official had a clear sense of who might head such a government.

“Although Nawaz Sharif … has grown increasingly outspoken in his criticism of Mr Zardari, US and Pakistani officials and analysts said it was unlikely he would be interested in taking over the government at this point,” the Post noted. “The best outcome here is that the instability will be taken advantage of by the military in ways that aren’t bad, getting rid of lots of cronies” who currently fill government positions, another Obama official told the Post.

From the US point of view, he said, the worst-case scenario would be an attempt by Pakistan’s Supreme Court to oust Mr Zardari by revoking his immunity from prosecution in a dated Swiss money-laundering case that could render his 2008 election illegal and throw the government into chaos, the newspaper added.

“If things happen in a constitutional way, there is no burning issue here,” another US official said. “At the end of the day, we’re committed to a civilian government and a constitutional process. If the political crisis became a distraction to the war effort or crucial flood reconstruction, or becomes destabilising and brings people into the streets -- something that could very well happen -- that’s not a good thing,” the official added.