PESHAWAR, Pakistan — America’s key ally in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban plunged deeper into turmoil Wednesday after its Supreme Court disqualified popular opposition leader Nawaz Sharif from running for parliament.
The ruling threatens to trigger a new political crisis that could paralyze the government and push Pakistan to the brink of collapse as the nuclear- armed country battles an economic collapse and a sustained assault by Islamic extremists.
Pakistan’s stock market dropped 5 percent as investors panicked, and analysts said conflict between Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League and President Asif Ali Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party could produce a repeat of the 1990s, when their political parties repeatedly toppled each other’s governments until the military staged a coup in 1999.
“The future of democracy will be in serious question,” said Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a political analyst in Lahore.
The new instability comes as the Obama administration is asking Pakistan to take more aggressive action against Islamic militants, and it complicates the administration’s nearly completed review of U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled that Sharif couldn’t run for a seat in parliament because of an old criminal conviction, dashing his ambitions for a third term as prime minister. Sharif isn’t a member of parliament, as a previous ruling barred him from running in the elections last year, a prohibition he had hoped the Supreme Court would overturn.
