When Yousaf Raza Gilani was elected as Pakistan's Prime Minister four years ago, his first act was to release the top judges who were under house arrest under orders from Pakistan's then ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf. On Monday, the very same judges indicted Gilani on charges of contempt of court for failing to pursue allegations of corruption against his boss, President Asif Ali Zardari. If Gilani is convicted, he will be disqualified from parliament and could face up to six months behind bars.
Gilani seems braced for the occasion. "If I'm convicted," the prime minister told Al-Jazeera in an interview on the eve of his court appearance, "then I'm not supposed to be a member of parliament." Earlier, the Supreme Court denied his appeal against the contempt charges. On Monday, Gilani made a second appearance at the court, waving enthusiastically at the small crowd of supporters that had gathered to cheer on his defiance.
"The Supreme Court in Pakistan is a completely new axis that has emerged," says Vali Nasr, professor of international politics at The Fletcher School at Tufts University. However, despite its decisions that favored the military establishment, the court isn't the best friend of the generals at all. In recent weeks, the court has decided to summon top intelligence officials and question them about the illegal detention of terrorism suspects — a move that lends some balance to its decisions. It will also, later this month, hear a case from the early 1990s that alleges the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency supported select candidates in an effort to destabilize the PPP. The military, says Nasr, has "periodically been on a collision course with the Supreme Court."
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