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Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered the arrest of the prime minister Tuesday on corruption allegations, ratcheting up pressure on a government that is also facing street protests led by a cleric who has a history of ties to the army. ????PAKISTAN’S Supreme Court has ordered the arrest of Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf and 15 others over corruption allegations, raising fears of a political crisis just months ahead of an election. ????Ashraf denies accepting bribes when approving power generation projects as minister for water and power in 2010. ????Analysts say that the move is unlikely to lead to his immediate removal. ????It comes as a populist cleric, Tahirul Qadri, led thousands of protesters in the capital city, Islamabad, demanding the government resign. ????Clashes briefly erupted before Qadri addressed his thousands of supporters camped near parliament, vowing to continue his mass protest indefinitely. ????The cleric has said he wants the military and judiciary to be involved in installing a caretaker government to oversee the forthcoming elections. ????There was a mood of mass euphoria as the news of the court’s order reached demonstrators, led by the cleric. Some jumped for joy and others hugged, some crying. ????“My happiness is beyond words,” said Ghulam Nabi, a 28-year-old laborer from Lahore. “We thank God for giving us this victory.” ????For demonstrators, the ruling served as validation of Qadri’s message that Pakistan’s current government is corrupt and incompetent. But for President Asif Ali Zardari’s ruling party and many observers, the ruling heightened suspicion that Qadri’s protest is being engineered behind the scenes by a powerful entity, perhaps the military, with the possible involvement of the judiciary. ????The timing may just be a coincidence, but to many observers it bolsters allegations that the cleric is backed by elements of the judiciary and military. ????“It looks like the Supreme Court is part of this intrigue,” said Asma Jehangir, a human rights activist and former Supreme Court Bar Association president. “This isn’t coincidence. Look at the timing. I believe the Supreme Court’s moral authority has vanished.” ????The Supreme Court order says the prime minister and the others should be arrested and appear in court within 24 hours. But correspondents say the prime minister’s lawyers may find ways of delaying any appearance. It remains unclear how Zardari’s government will respond. ????Pakistani media have predicted that more “chaos” and “uncertainty” will appear in the future of the country. The Frontier Post said the country has landed in a “deep crisis” and “huge mess.” ????The News called the arrest order against Ashraf an “unusual course of events” and “virtually unprecedented” even in Pakistan’s “troubled history.” ????For more than a year, the high court has been investigating Ashraf’s role in the issuance of licenses to so-called rental power plants, a short-term project that was supposed to help solve the country’s power shortage. The government signed three- to five-year contracts with relatively small private power stations, essentially renting them while it worked on building larger plants. ????The effort did little to alleviate the country’s power troubles, however, and wasted millions of dollars in government money. ????The corruption allegations against Ashraf involve purported kickbacks related to bidding for the rental plants, which took place while Ashraf was water and power minister from March 2008 to February 2011. ????Ashraf was appointed prime minister in June to replace Yousuf Raza Gilani, who was forced from office that month by the Supreme Court after he was convicted of contempt for ignoring the court’s order to revive an old corruption case against Zardari. ????Ashraf was set to lead the party into general elections due in May. Most observers say they expect the balance of power in the forthcoming parliamentary polls to broadly stay the same unless turnout is high, which could allow minor parties to translate popular support into seats. ????Many analysts at the time warned that Ashraf’s appointment was risky, given the power plant scandal hanging over him. The episode earned Ashraf the nickname “Raja Rental” in the Pakistani media. ????Ashraf is a senior figure and has twice been a minister in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)-led government, which has been in power since 2008. ????He comes from the town of Gujjar Khan, about an hour’s drive from the capital. ????But his parents owned agricultural land in the town of Sanghar in the southern province of Sindh, where he was born in 1950. He graduated from Sindh University in 1970. ????He speaks fluent Sindhi, considering himself half Sindhi, and has cooperated successfully with the predominantly Sindhi leadership of the PPP. ????He comes from a political family. One of his uncles served as a minister in the Cabinet of military ruler, Ayub Khan, in the 1960s. ????After completing his education, Ashraf moved back to Gujjar Khan and tried to set up a shoe factory with his brothers. The business did not do well, and he shifted to property and that business is said to have flourished. ????He has been active in national politics since 1988, and has acted as an important contact point for the PPP leadership in the Rawalpindi region, where Gujjar Khan is located. ????He contested but lost parliamentary elections in 1990, 1993 and 1997, but won in 2002 and 2008. ????He presided over controversial deals under the Rental Power Projects (RPP) scheme, which was aimed at boosting electricity generation at a time when power cuts were becoming frequent. ????His repeated promises to end power shortages remained unfulfilled, and were made the butt of jokes in the Pakistani media. ????Subsequently, charges of kickbacks were brought against him and others in the RPP deals. He denies those charges, although an investigation by the National Accountability is still continuing. ????Due to all the negative publicity he attracted, he was dropped from the Cabinet in a reshuffle in February 2011, although he returned some months later as minister for information technology. ????After his nomination as the next prime minister became apparent, the country’s largest English language daily, Dawn, pointed out his apparent failures as the power minister. ????But the investigation into the power projects has not been his only challenge as prime minister. ????The Supreme Court has been pressing the government to ask the Swiss authorities to reopen a corruption case against Zardari. ????It was Gilani’s failure to abide by the court’s wishes that led to his disqualification. ????Ashraf’s government chose to comply with the court order and wrote to Swiss authorities in November, withdrawing a 2007 request for investigations into Zardari to be halted. But it remains unclear whether the case against Zardari will be reopened by Switzerland. ????Ashraf may have given ground in that battle, and how he responds to the arrest order remains to be seen — but he is likely to put up a fight. ????Correspondents say the general belief is that President Zardari would never choose a person for the top government slot who was not a die-hard PPP loyalist.(SD-Agencies) | 