PRESIDENT Pervez Musharraf is running out of options. Legal complexities may save him in the short-term, but few expect him to hold on for long, raising new uncertainty over Pakistan's support for the aggressive US approach to fighting radical Islamist groups. The declaration by the winners of last month's parliamentary elections that they will form a coalition government and reinstate judges sacked by Musharraf has robbed the president of his last trump card: division in the political opposition. Parliament is to convene in the next week or so. Within a month of the new Cabinet being formed, the ruling parties say they will vote to restore the judges - setting up a legal fight with Musharraf that could drag on for weeks or months but which he has little prospect of winning. “The die is pretty much cast for him,” said Pakistani political analyst Nasim Zehra, a fellow at Harvard University's Asia Center. “He can't survive in the sense of being the man who calls the shots. He can insist on staying in office as it all unravels around him.” A year of turmoil triggered by Musharraf's attempt to oust the independent-minded chief justice robbed him of public support. He has since lost the aces he held for most of his eight-year rule: command of the army, a supportive parliament and unqualified Western backing. Amid growing public resentment over military rule, the parties of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and another ex-prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, won 63 percent of the parliament seats and seized the political center stage after being sidelined since Musharraf seized control in a 1999 coup. While the victors remain short of the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed to impeach the president, their agreement Sunday to set aside long-standing rivalries and team up leaves the retired general on the defensive. “It is a defining moment in Pakistan's political history,” said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a political scientist at the University of Management Sciences in the eastern city of Lahore. “The mainstream political forces in the country have a unanimity of views on the most fundamental issue facing the country: to get Pakistan on the track of constitutional democracy and a parliamentary form of government.” If restored, the Supreme Court could revisit the legality of Musharraf's October re-election as president by the previous parliament. The court had been set to rule on that issue when Musharraf imposed emergency rule Nov. 3 and purged its ranks. Musharraf, who stacked the court with sympathetic judges, maintains that restoring the deposed justices is not legally possible. Whether a simple majority vote is enough to restore the pre-November judiciary is the subject of dispute - one of the many legal conundrums facing Pakistan as it grapples with the transition to civilian government. A prominent Musharraf ally, former government spokesman Tariq Azim, on Monday repeated the president's insistence that he will not step down despite widespread clamor for him to resign. “A person who is in the saddle still commands the horse,” Azim said. Azim said the traditionally fierce competition between the parties of Bhutto and Sharif - who alternated in power in short-lived governments in the 1990s - could resurface. Political analyst Ikram Sehgal also raised that possibility, saying the leader of Bhutto's party, her widower Asif Ali Zardari, might have agreed to the coalition pact to play for time on the issue of judges. Zardari, who was known as “Mr. 10 Percent” for allegedly profiting from kickbacks during his wife's time in power, will be wary that the restored judges could challenge a corruption amnesty introduced by Musharraf last year, he said. “It would put Zardari in trouble straightaway. It would be like taking an ax to his own feet,” Sehgal said. Yet to resist calls for the judges to be reinstated - including detained ex-chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry - would draw the ire of Pakistan's lawyers, who have become popular by braving tear gas and police batons to lead opposition to Musharraf. The unpopular president's own capacity to fight is limited. While the current Supreme Court is pliant and Musharraf retains the authority to dissolve parliament, exploiting either power would risk an uproar. Nor can he order in the military if his presidency is under threat. Musharraf retired as army chief in November, and his successor says the generals want to stay out of politics. US officials have also begun a discreet realignment, stressing that Washington's alliance is with Pakistan, not Musharraf alone - a shift from calling the president “indispensable” in the fight against the Taleban and Al-Qaeda and their sympathizers in Pakistan's tribal region along the border with Afghanistan. The changing political landscape could have ramifications for US policy on how to combat attacks on American forces in Afghanistan and capture extremist leaders hiding in Pakistan. Pakistan's new civilian rulers will be more wary of the military offensives Musharraf pursued in the frontier region - a campaign that proved unpopular with Pakistanis and has been blamed by many here for the surge in extremist violence across the country. Sharif has said he wants to negotiate an end to Islamist militancy rather than use force. Western officials are skeptical about whether that will work, but they recognize that a year of turmoil has badly undercut the president. “Musharraf still has time to make a decision of bowing out with grace and be remembered for some positive things that he did,” said Zehra, the Harvard fellow. “His staying on only creates more embarrassment and problems.” __
