Pakistan’s government stepped down at the weekend after a full five-year term, paving the way for an election and change of administration that would be the country’s first constitutional democratic handover since independence and partition from India in 1947.
“It is true that in the past five years we have not been able to make rivers of milk and honey flow in the country,” said Raja Pervez Ashraf, prime minister in the Pakistan People’s party (PPP) government of President Asif Ali Zardari, in a televised farewell speech. “We have used all our resources to strengthen the foundations of democracy and – by the grace of God – today democracy is so strong that no one will dare to dislodge it in the future.”
The PPP and its leader Mr Zardari, who was elected after his wife Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, claim credit for strengthening democracy in a country that has been ruled for long periods by the armed forces – most recently under General Pervez Musharraf in the decade up to 2008.But the government’s popularity has collapsed during its time in office, undermined by bombings and the killing of civilians by the Pakistan Taliban, and by power shortages and other economic problems.
Even the process leading to a change of government is deadlocked, with mainstream politicians so far unable to agree on a caretaker prime minister to run the country for up to 90 days, and to oversee the general election. Among the possible candidates for the position are Ishrat Hussain, a former central bank governor and World Bank official, and Nasir Aslam Zahid, a former judge.“The immaturity of our democracy is nowhere more evident than in the failure to agree on a way forward,” said one politician from the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). “This decision should have been made weeks ago and we still seem to be haggling over it.”
Pakistanis mostly welcomed the completion of the government’s term – a feat that had sometimes seemed in doubt – but criticised Mr Zardari’s inability to curb extremist violence or to start restoring the economy to health.
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