Pakistan's Supreme Court sets collision course with new prime minister

Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Wednesday demanded that the nation’s brand-new prime minister follow an order to reopen a long-dormant corruption case against President Asif Ali Zardari, setting up the likelihood of a continuing constitutional crisis. The court last week disqualified from office Yousuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s longest-serving prime minister, whom it convicted of contempt in April because Gilani refused to follow the same order. The ruling party replaced Gilani with a former federal energy chief, Raja Pervez Ashraf, who has already indicated he will not comply with the order and faces his own set of corruption charges in a separate case before the high court. Some political and legal observers have accused the court, headed by populist, corruption-battling Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, of working to destabilize an already-shaky civilian government. Ashraf and his predecessor maintain that Pakistan’s constitution grants the president immunity from prosecution, but the court has consistently ruled otherwise, saying no one is above the law. The legal and political upheaval has complicated U.S. efforts to broker a compromise with Pakistan to reopen vital NATO supply routes that pass into landlocked Afghanistan through Pakistani territory. The routes have been shuttered for more than seven months, creating a logistical headache not only for the Pentagon but other forces, including France’s, which need access to Pakistan’s southern port to withdraw vast quantities of materiel. Zardari has denied the corruption allegations, which date to the 1990s and involve Swiss bank accounts held by the president and his late wife, Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister who was assassinated in 2007. Gilani for months refused to write a letter to Swiss authorities asking them to reopen graft and money-laundering cases against Zardari. The court on Wednesday gave the new prime minister until July 12 to respond to its directive and offer any arguments as to why he might not have to pursue the corruption charges. Some analysts predict that Ashraf will only be in the job for a matter of weeks — the time the court will take to consider his response and hand down a ruling that, observers say, will almost certainly declare that Ashraf must write the so-called “Swiss letter.” “The new prime minister is facing the same situation” as Gilani, said S.M. Zafar, a longtime lawyer in Islamabad. “He could write the letter or he could take some middle ground that is acceptable to the court as well. "But if that doesn’t happen then I see a disaster in the coming days,” Zafar said. “The crisis would worsen further.” Other analysts said the court's respect for rule of law is admirable but also can go too far. “There is a place for judicial activism in almost every country, particularly one in which the rule of law has all too often been conspicuous by its absence,” Mahir Ali, a columnist for the English-language newspaper Dawn wrote in Wednesday’s editions, before the latest court ruling. “But the rule of law does not mean rule by the Supreme Court, which has no right to be a substitute for parliament.”