Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani will make a national address on television soon.

Aaj TV and GEO News reports that Gilani will announce the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.

FYI: U.S. drone attack in Frontier Region Bannu, FATA.  A senior al-Qaeda figure has been reportedly killed.

Pakistan’s state machinery is working fine. 

Islamabad has implemented one of the most severe blockages of public movement in the country’s history.  [Update: It didn't work too well in Lahore.]  Remember, this is a country of 165 million.

Major national highways and city roads are off limits.  Shipping containers have been laid out on the roads by the Zardari-dominated Gilani government to prevent a sizable assembly of Long March protesters.  [Good luck to exporters with shipping deadlines to meet!]

The Pakistan Army is deployed in Islamabad in full force to prevent public assembly.  [It's unclear as to whether they are just following orders to let Zardari self-destruct completely or whether Army Chief Kayani is in on the draconian measures against Pakistan's citizenry.]

The provincial police services and national intelligence agencies – including, some lawyers movement activists claim, plainclothes ISI officers — have detained dozens of major civil society and political leaders.  They have also arrested hundreds of lawyers and party activists.   

The most watched news channel is blocked in much of the country.  Even dorm residents at Islamabad’s Quaid-e Azam University were booted out of their housing facilities — many or most with no place to go.  SMS service has been blocked in Islamabad.  This could extend to the rest of the country. 

The Zardari-dominated government (I write Zardari-dominated because the government is technically that of Gilani, the dodo premier who wears no clothes) has demonstrated very well that it is able to develop a comprehensive strategy to combat a threat to its creeping hegemony and use a wide range of elements of the state apparatus to execute it.

Granted, it is facing a non-violent opposition.  It is easy to suppress the peaceful and unarmed.  Fighting cannibalistic terrorists is another matter.  Rehman Malik, now de-facto interior minister, ran away to Zardari House in Islamabad after Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, despite being in charge of her security.

Proclamations of the demise of the Pakistani state are always premature as long as the state is able to function at will.  The will, tragically, is generally demonstrated for the sake of self-preservation or aggrandizement.

The state performs well when it wants to, when the major elements of the state work in concert with one another.  As with today, it is for the wrong reasons. 

But in losing legitimacy and earning the hatred of the people, authoritarians win the battle and lose the war.  It is all downhill for Zardari from here.  In his fake psychiatric report, Zardari claimed to be suffering from amnesia.  Apparently he forgot what happened to Musharraf in 2007-8.

Update: 4:45AM (New York) – Zardari just lost the battle of Lahore and the entire war.  I think the game will be over soon.  Bilawal — take out the sleeping bag.  Papa’s coming for a visit.

Countless times today, GEO News has broadcast this brutal presentation of the hypocrisy of Zardari defense attorney, Law Minister, and Senate Chairman Farooq H. Naek. It probably contributed to Zardari’s decision to curb the channel’s broadcasts.

Federal Minister of Information Sherry Rehman has resigned from the cabinet.  The dramatic move comes after President Asif Ali Zardari decided to block the transmission of GEO News and make it difficult for Pakistanis to view other channels, such as Aaj Television.

Through resigning Rehman regains some of the legitimacy she has lost during her service under the increasingly autocratic Zardari-dominated government.  As information minister, Rehman had to put herself before the firing line and defend Zardari’s indefensible behavior with verbal gymnastics. The humiliation has been mounting.  In late February, Zahid Hussain reported in the Wall Street Journal that Zardari called a senior minister a “witch” in a recent meeting.  The consensus is that Rehman is the unnamed minister.

Prior to joining politics, Rehman was an accomplished journalist.  She was editor of the Herald, a respected Karachi-based monthly.

The announcement of Rehman’s resignation brought to end a volatile day in Pakistani politics.  In the afternoon, reports of a virtually finalized deal between the PPP and PML-N — ‘guaranteed’ by Washington and Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani — emerged.  Over the next few hours, denial came from all sides.  And then during the evening, GEO News’ broadcasts in much of the country were shut off at the order of President Zardari.

It is unclear where anyone stands in this complex political battle.  Are Zardari and Gilani playing a good cop/bad cop game?  Or is Zardari the lone man out?  Is this his last stand?  Is he trying to go out with guns blazing?  Will Bilawal be getting a new roommate?  Or is Kayani in on it too?  If not, will the danda strike within 24 hrs?

I am expecting even bigger news — possibly another, far far more significant resignation — within the next 24 hours.  But today’s events demonstrate the futility of predictions involving such volatile characters.  Over the past two weeks, the PPP and PML-N have been trying to make things harder for the other by releasing false leaks through anonymous quotes and planting stories in newspapers.  The game has been dirty.

So, fasten your seat belts, Pakistan.  You’re on the Zardari Express.  And I think it’s about to crash.

Broadcasts of GEO News has been shut down in areas of Pakistan’s major cities, including: Gujranwala, Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Quetta, and Sargodha.

Update: 12:58PM (New York) — Aaj TV reports that its channel number has also been changed in a number of cities in Pakistan.

[Click here to watch GEO live]

This is clearly due to pressure from the federal government on local cable providers.

GEO News has taken a critical stance of Asif Zardari and other leading PPP officials.  The station has broadcast public service announcements from a foundation affiliated with its owner containing sound bites from leading PPP officials in favor of the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.  These officials, such as Law Minister Farooq Naik, now oppose Iftikhar’s restoration.

Also, GEO News adds that some cable operators have been ordered to put the station as the last channel available so viewers are unable to find it.  If this has been done to your cable service, then all you need to do is go to channel 1 and press the up button, instead of scrolling down the dozens of channels you have.

The move sheds light on the Pakistani government’s new strategy toward the Long March.  Earlier, there were false leaks of a deal between the PPP and PML-N.  The intent of these leaks were to confuse the public (fooled me!), create a divide between the PML-N and the Lawyers Movement, and take the air out of the Long March.

Targeting GEO’s transmissions in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, in particular, is designed to further the confusion and prevent information sharing regarding the Long March, which is scheduled to go arrive in Islamabad on Monday.

And his estranged son, Aatish Taseer, published scathing accounts of him in a memoir.

Here’s an excerpt:

?I had begun my journey asking why my father was Muslim, and this was why: none of Islam?s once powerful moral imperatives existed within him, but he was Muslim because he doubted the Holocaust, hated America and Israel, thought Hindus were weak and cowardly, and because the glories of the Islamic past excited him.

?The faith decayed within him, ceased to be dynamic, ceased to provide moral guidance, became nothing but a deep, unreachable historical and political identity. This was all that still had the force of faith. It was significant because in the end, this was the moderate Muslim, and it was too little moderation and in the wrong areas. It didn?t matter how someone prayed, how much they prayed, what dress they wore, whether they chose to drink or not, but it did matter that someone harboured feelings of hatred, for Jews, Americans or Hindus, that were founded in faith and only masked in political arguments.?

As I have written on Twitter, the present political turmoil in Pakistan is part of:1) A genuine push for the rule of law and 2) A complex power struggle involving at least half a dozen major actors, each of which is pursuing multiple, contradictory strategies at the same time.

One of these actors is Nawaz Sharif, who has learned the power of saying no.  In doing so, he presents a challenge to the status quo, which another actor, Washington, wants to preserve.  As a result, the administration has had to make a marked shift in its policy toward the PML-N.  It’s now more conciliatory.

This is not to the liking of some hawks in the PPP, whose political fortunes are tied to Asif Ali Zardari.  Zardari loses as Sharif gains.

Sharif has had to overcome negative reputation of him in Washington that emerged during the Bush administration. Those challenges remain.  To further them and stifle any compromise by Washington in Sharif’s favor, a Pakistani insider informed me that elements in the PPP are working to present Sharif as a religious fundamentalist, in order to discredit him among the DC Beltway crowd.

We see the fruits of this aggressive tactic of the PPP hawks in Mort Kondracke’s column today in Roll Call.

Kondracke writes:

Sharif, often identified as a “religious nationalist,” was a protege of Islamist military dictator Zia Ul Haq. He accused former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of being a “Zionist-Hindu traitor” and, as prime minister, pushed a law to establish Sharia.

The irony is that the unelected PPP figure who fed this story to Kondracke was himself an adviser to Sharif during this phase of his career.  He is now a self-described liberal.

The reality is that Sharif, like the preponderance of Pakistan’s politicians, is a pragmatist.  He is a center-right politician.  He often makes coalitions with the hard right and Islamists and panders to them.  But he is as pragmatic/opportunistic as Zardari and the former Sharif adviser now affiliated with the PPP.

Politicians are politicians.  They remake themselves according to changing contexts and Sharif has done that since 2006.  If political actors were static, then the individual who fed this story to Kondracke would remain a violent Islamist as he was during his student days.

Some characteristics, however, do not change.  This unelected PPP official likely fed the story on the alleged George Clooney-Fatima Bhutto relationship to the National Enquirer.  He’s the only PPP official with that much of an awareness of the broad U.S. media scene.  In an example of continuity, this man is believed to have fed ‘scandalous’ photos of the late Benazir Bhutto and her mother, Nusrat, during an election campaign.  He was a Sharif adviser at the time and would, several defections later, become a Bhutto adviser.  As progressive as he claims to be, he seems to routinely use sexuality to defame female politicians.

PS: The end result of all this political turmoil is that Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani is involved in the political process now more than ever.

Maulvi Iqbal Haider makes a living by filing court petitions that benefit whoever is in power in Islamabad.

Today, he filed a petition to charge Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif with treason.

In May 2007, he filed a petition against Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.

In December 2007, he submitted a petition to the Islamabad High Court which sought to pre-empt the restoration of the deposed judges by parliament. He was once head of a tiny political party, the Awami Himayat Tehreek, which was previously named the Pervez Musharraf Himayat Tehreek (Movement for the Support of Pervez Musharraf). (See: Who is Maulvi Iqbal Haider?)

Class act this guy.  He must share an office with “Ambassador Dr.” Shahid Amin Khan.

Pakistan has come to a point in which political half measures are no longer an option.

Its economy is in tatters, amidst a global recession that will be multi-year.  The textile industry contracted by 33% this past year.  Skilled and unskilled laborers will be returning from Dubai with little possibility of local employment. This year’s growth rate will be below 3%, which, for an impoverished country like Pakistan is effectively negative growth.

The militant threat is rising.  Meanwhile, the state security apparatus — in a fast replay of Musharraf’s downward spiral in 2007 — is presently oriented around suppressing domestic dissent, at the cost of combating takfiri terrorists.

Political reform is non-existent. State failures are mounting on top of those that have accumulated over the decades.  Pockets of the country in which the primary organs of the state — the elected leadership, bureaucracy, police, and judiciary — are non-functional have proven to be ripe for the rise of militant vigilantism.  These pockets exist not only in the Pashtun belt bordering Afghanistan, but also in no-go areas in major cities and a good number of rural districts throughout the country.

State resources must be channeled to combat these threats and seize opportunities to put Pakistan on the right course.

For that to occur, Pakistan needs detente between its two largest parties, the Peoples Party (PPP) and Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).  They must serve as anchors of stability, not agents of chaos.

There is, however, no trust between the the Peoples Party (PPP) and Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N). The sole reason for the breakdown in trust is the fact that President Asif Ali Zardari made three separate agreements with former Prime Minister Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, only to renege on his commitments after the expiry of each deadline.

The absence of trust and the imminence of a direct confrontation between the Long Marchers and an increasingly repressive state apparatus necessitates immediate, decisive change on the part of the PPP-led federal government to restore political stability.

So how does Pakistan get there?

1. END GOVERNOR’S RULE IN PUNJAB: Allow the PML-N to form a coalition in the province, preferably with the PPP.  Reverse bureaucratic and judicial changes made after the imposition of governor’s rule.
2. EXPAND THE NRO: Immediately pass a new amendment that expands the National Reconciliation Ordinance to political parties left out, enables the Sharifs to run for office, and removes the two-term bar on elected officials.
3. RESTORE CHIEF JUSTICE IFTIKHAR CHAUDHRY: Let him serve the remainder of his term with honor and respect.  A judge who stands up for the rule of law is not an enemy, but a national hero.  He is a potential asset for revitalizing civil law in Pakistan.  Western governments need to realize this.  Neither his term nor his powers should be reduced.
4. CREATE A NATIONAL UNITY GOVERNMENT: Invite the PML-N to rejoin the federal cabinet.  If the PML-N declines, it should become a productive policy-oriented opposition with a complete shadow cabinet.  As a sign of good faith, the PPP can vacate a National Assembly or Senate seat and offer it to Tehreek-e Insaf’s Imran Khan.
5. COMMIT TO A NON-AGGRESSION PACT: Have all power brokers commit to letting the national and provincial assemblies complete their terms.
6. RESTORE THE SOVEREIGNTY OF PARLIAMENT: Reduce presidential powers to their original form.  Improve the functioning of parliamentary oversight committees. Televise their proceedings on a dedicated terrestrial channel.
7. IMPLEMENT THE CHARTER OF DEMOCRACY: The COD is one of the best political consensus documents in Pakistan since the 1973 constitution.  It is the product of the maturation of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. [Full text of COD] Start with issues such as provincial autonomy and the National Finance Commission award, which will help improve inter-provincial relations and bring the Baloch out of the periphery.

The steps above ensure the political participation of all the major players in the present political setup; they all get a piece of the pie.  Pakistan is then able to focus on pressing issues such as economic and political reform, counterterrorism, and poverty alleviation.