Shutdown

Gen. Pervez Musharraf cut a solitary figure on Pakistan's state-run television shortly before midnight Saturday in somber, traditional civilian clothes to explain why he suspended the constitution, placed several Supreme Court judges under house arrest, detained a number of opposition lawyers, took private cable news channels off-air, and plunged an already restive country into a fresh and perhaps intractable crisis.

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Earlier during the day, news channels reported the unusual movement of police and paramilitary troops in and around Islamabad and of senior government and military officials near the Aiwan-e-Sadar, the official residence of Pakistan's president. Then sometime around 5 p.m., the news channels went black. Islamabad's Constitution Avenue, the broad boulevard running past the buildings which house the presidency, parliament and the Supreme Court, was cordoned off by police. As of late Saturday, there was no visible army presence in the streets of Pakistan's capital and there were no reports of unrest. Official sources, requesting anonymity, say there are no plans to deploy the army.

"I have taken this difficult decision to dispel the impression that the government is paralyzed," Musharraf said in the pre-recorded speech. "Government officials have been paraded in and out of the courts," he said, adding that the higher judiciary's "hyper-activism" had weakened the writ of the state and undermined its efforts in the war against terrorism and extremism. "After all that we have achieved in the last eight years, Pakistan is on a downward trajectory and inaction now would be suicide for Pakistan," he said in English. To Western allies, he added, "You cannot expect or demand from us the level of democracy you have earned over centuries of struggle."

Voices in and outside of Pakistan were not convinced and condemned Musharraf's proclamation of emergency. Returning late Saturday from Dubai, Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister who last month ended over eight years of self-exile following negotiations with Musharraf, called for the immediate restoration of the constitution at a hurriedly organized press conference in Karachi. "This is not an emergency, this is martial law imposed by the army chief," she said, referring to Musharraf's controversial dual role. "This has been done to put off elections."

Musharraf's latest move comes despite strong advice to the contrary from key allies, the United States and Britain, and on the very day that the Supreme Court was rushing to rule on his eligibility to hold the country's highest office. Musharraf precipitated a political crisis last March, and lost much of his popularity, when he tried to sack Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

Chaudhry was reinstated by the Supreme Court on the back of an unprecedented popular movement led by Pakistan's lawyers. Official sources say that Chaudhry is among the judges who were taken into "protective custody" from court premises on Saturday. Aitzaz Ahsan, a prominent lawmaker who led the movement to reinstate the chief justice, was arrested from his Islamabad home on Saturday. Ahsan's wife Bushra tells NEWSWEEK from Lahore that the Supreme Court had not only voided Musharraf's eligibility for holding the office of president but that just moments before his detention, Chaudhry had "ruled that all Pakistanis must reject and resist the orders of an illegal president, an illegal prime minister and an illegal government."