Al Jazeera reports: “The decision comes two months after Gilani, the nation’s longest-running prime minister, was convicted of contempt for refusing to ask Swiss authorities to reopen corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari. … The allegations against Zardari date back to the 1990s, when he and his late wife, former president Benazir Bhutto, are suspected of using Swiss bank accounts to launder an estimated $12m allegedly paid in bribes by companies seeking customs inspection contracts.”

JUNAID AHMAD, junaidsahmad at gmail.com
Ahmad is assistant professor of law at Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan and is currently visiting the U.S. He said today: “The supreme court ruling disqualifying Prime Minister Gilani from office throws this deeply unpopular Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)-led civilian government further into crisis. The government is trying to be the first civilian dispensation to complete its five-year term in power, but seems to have few friends both in the population at large as well as in the army establishment — the institution that really calls the shots. The question now is whether the successor to Gilani that the PPP chooses will be willing to reopen the corruption cases against the PPP’s sitting president, Asif Zardari, as the supreme court has demanded and which Gilani’s unwillingness to do…cost him his job.”