[Many lawyers have vowed
to oppose anyone appointed to fill the chief justice’s post. Ms. Bandaranayake
was seen as a Rajapaksa loyalist until she ruled in September that Mr.
Rajapaksa’s younger brother, Basil Rajapaksa, needed to submit a $600 million
development bill to the nation’s nine provincial councils before it could be
approved.]
NEW DELHI — President Mahinda
Rajapaksa of Sri
Lanka removed the nation’s chief justice from office on Sunday
in the culmination of a widely criticized impeachment process that has crippled
the nation’s courts and may precipitate a constitutional crisis.
Mr. Rajapaksa’s decision
to sign a decree dismissing Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake came two days
after Parliament, packed with Rajapaksa loyalists, voted to impeach her in
defiance of a Court of Appeals ruling. The court had nullified the verdict of a
parliamentary panel that had found the chief justice guilty of financial
irregularities. Separately, the Supreme Court had ruled that the impeachment
process was illegal.
Religious leaders,
pro-democracy activists and lawyers groups have denounced the impeachment
process as a naked power grab by Mr. Rajapaksa and members of his family who
serve in his government. Lawyers across Sri Lanka boycotted courts on Thursday
and Friday in protest.
Many lawyers have vowed
to oppose anyone appointed to fill the chief justice’s post. Ms. Bandaranayake
was seen as a Rajapaksa loyalist until she ruled in September that Mr.
Rajapaksa’s younger brother, Basil Rajapaksa, needed to submit a $600 million
development bill to the nation’s nine provincial councils before it could be
approved.
In November, the
governing party filed impeachment motions against her, and in December a
parliamentary panel appointed by another of the president’s brothers found her
guilty.
The United States
government has repeatedly expressed concern about the impeachment process. Ms.
Bandaranayake has yet to announce whether she will accept the president’s
decision to remove her from office. She had earlier protested the rapidity of
the parliamentary proceedings and her inability to confront or cross-examine
her accusers.
President Rajapaksa and
his government ended one of the world’s longest and bloodiest civil wars in
2009 by defeating the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, bringing stability
to much of the country and increasing opportunities for tourism. But he and his
brothers have been accused of being involved in unlawful killings of civilians,
and a United Nations panel ruled that accusations of war crimes against the Sri
Lankan government were credible and should be investigated.
A FIERY PREACHER’S ARRIVAL SHAKES PAKISTANI POLITICS
[Now he is
mobilizing a “million man” march that he says will reach the capital,
Islamabad, on Monday, where he promises to lead a lengthy sit-in that will kick
off a “moral revolution” similar to the one in Tahrir Square in Cairo that
overthrew the Egyptian ruling order. “There will be no defeat,” Mr. Qadri, 61,
said in a phone interview on Saturday. “This is for a spiritual and moral
revolution. We will not surrender before corruption.”]
By Declan Walsh
 |
Muhammad Tahir-ul Qadri,
center, is mobilizing a “million man” march that
he says will reach Islamabad
on Monday.
|
But the starting whistle has been sounded by an unlikely
figure: a tough-talking preacher who is calling for a democratic “revolution,”
even if he is not eligible for election himself.
Little known in Pakistan just one month ago, the preacher,
Muhammad Tahir-ul Qadri, a white-bearded Sufi scholar with a taste for hard
politics, has taken the country by storm in recent weeks in a campaign that has
gripped the news media and jolted the traditional political mainstream.
After returning from Canada, where he has lived for seven
years, Mr. Qadri made his first mark with a large
rally in Lahore on Dec. 23 in
which he demanded that President Asif Ali Zardari’s government resign to make
way for a caretaker administration led by technocrats.
Now he is mobilizing a “million man” march that he says
will reach the capital, Islamabad, on Monday, where he promises to lead a
lengthy sit-in that will kick off a “moral revolution” similar to the one in
Tahrir Square in Cairo that overthrew the Egyptian ruling order. “There will be
no defeat,” Mr. Qadri, 61, said in a phone interview on Saturday. “This is for
a spiritual and moral revolution. We will not surrender before corruption.”
That message resonates with ordinary Pakistanis weary of
poor governance, dire energy shortages and sickening violence. On Saturday,
ethnic Hazara Shiites in the city of Quetta blocked a road with the coffins of
victims ofa
sectarian attack in the city on
Thursday night. The death toll from the attack — the worst ever against the
Hazara — has since risen to 96, according to Reuters, and the protesters said
they would remove the coffins only when the army took over security in Quetta.
But Mr. Qadri’s sudden arrival on the political scene has
also brought worries that he represents the interests of forces bent on
derailing Pakistan’s fragile democratic order.
Questions have been raised about Mr. Qadri’s source of
money — one opposition senator estimates that he has already spent $4 million
on relentless television advertising — and, inevitably in a country where
conspiracy theories run rife, media reports have buzzed with allegations of
outside support.
Some theories focus on Western governments, particularly
the United States, but most analysts point to the convergence between Mr.
Qadri’s agenda and that of the powerful military, which has done little to
disguise its disdain for Mr. Zardari — and even the opposition leaders who
threaten to replace him.
Richard E. Hoagland, the American deputy ambassador, told
reporters in Islamabad on Jan. 5 that the United States did not support any
Pakistani party and denied any link to Mr. Qadri.
The planned march on Islamabad “reflects the military’s
desire for regime change” and “signals that military interest in political
engineering is alive and well,” said Shamila N. Chaudhary, an analyst at the
Eurasia Group who formerly served as the director for Afghanistan and Pakistan on
President Obama’s National Security Council.
But, Ms. Chaudhary added, the days when Pakistan’s military
could seize power on a whim have passed, thanks to an aggressive news media and
fiercely independent courts. “Real regime change led by Qadri is most
unlikely,” she said.
Nonetheless, the government is taking him seriously. The
interior minister, Rehman Malik, citing security concerns, has vowed to prevent
the march from reaching the gates of Parliament in Islamabad. Security
officials say a large crowd in Islamabad would provide an easy target for a
suicide bombing by Islamist extremists that, in turn, could set off widespread
unrest and open the door to a military intervention.
Both the military and Mr. Qadri have publicly denied
working together. Others say such comments are scaremongering meant to quell a
movement that taps into popular discontent.
At the very least, the situation betrays government jitters
about whether it can survive until its term ends on March 17. It is expected to
set elections for some time in April or May and appoint a government to take
over until the vote. If a peaceful election follows, the transfer of power
would represent a first in a country that has suffered three military coups
over nearly six decades.
But Mr. Qadri will not be running for office — as a dual
citizen of Pakistan and Canada, he is ineligible under Pakistani law.
He has been in office before, however. Before he became a
citizen of Canada, he was elected to Parliament under the military leader Gen.
Pervez Musharraf in 2002, only to resign two years later, disillusioned. Mr.
Qadri, a lawyer and scholar, moved to the Toronto area, where he concentrated
on his religious work, promoting inter-faith harmony and hosting
deradicalization seminars for young Muslims in the United States, Canada and
Denmark, he said. According to his Web site, his organization, Minhaj ul-Quran,
is active in 90 countries. Inside Pakistan, the group runs a university in
Lahore and over 600 schools and colleges, he said.
Supporters are drawn by his mix of modernism and religious
conservatism. Corruption is a focus of his politics, and he insists that all
election candidates should be vetted by the country’s tax authorities. He is
less clear, though, about his own finances. Street traders, small businesses
and ordinary Pakistanis are financing his impressive drive, Mr. Qadri said. So
has his family: his wife and daughters pawned their jewelry to help out, he
added.
But the preacher could not name one major campaign donor,
or say how much his team had spent on television advertisements. “I don’t get
involved in these things,” he said.
Heated talk of democratic upsets has come and gone before
in Pakistan, and the potency of Mr. Qadri’s challenge should become apparent on
Monday. Ms. Chaudhary, the analyst, predicted that he was “ultimately unlikely
to shape the election results.”
For his part, Mr. Qadri has moderated his demands,
stressing that his goal is simply to nudge Pakistan toward more open
leadership. “I can’t say that Pakistan will become America or Canada in a
couple of years,” he said. “But we want a reflection of America, to put the
process on track.”
Salman Masood contributed reporting from
Islamabad, and Waqar Gilani from Lahore, Pakistan.
This article has
been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction:
January 13, 2013
An earlier
version of this article mischaracterized the change in Muhammad Tahir-ul
Qadri’s religiosity when he moved to the Toronto area. He concentrated on his
religious work there; he did not “embrace Islam.”