Pakistani police surrounded the provincial assembly in the city of Lahore today to stop supporters of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif meeting a day after a court ruling against him and his brother.
Pakistan teetered on the verge of a debilitating power struggle after the Supreme Court ruling brought down a provincial government controlled by Mr Sharif, President Asif Ali Zardari's main rival.
In Lahore, capital of Punjab province, Sharif party members said they wanted to hold a debate in the provincial assembly but police had sealed off the building.
"When the people's representatives are barred from entering assemblies then what kind of democracy or justice can you expect?" asked Ali Asghar Manda, a member of Sharif's party, outside the assembly.
"We will continue our protest inside and outside the assembly until the restoration of true democracy, the removal of governor's rule and the withdrawal of the decisions against the Sharif brothers," he said.
The court decision to nullify the election last year of Mr Sharif's younger brother, Shahbaz, as Punjab's chief minister and to leave in place an electoral ban on Nawaz raised fears of a return to the turbulence of the 1990s, a decade that ended in a military takeover.
A showdown between Mr Zardari, widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, and two-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif has been brewing since they forced former army chief Pervez Musharraf to quit as president last August.
The court decision wiped 5 percent off share values on the Karachi market on Wednesday and the index fell 3 per cent early on Thursday. But it quickly recovered on International Monetary Fund comment on the possibility of easing monetary policy.
Mr Zardari imposed governor's rule, or direct rule by his representative, in Punjab for two months late on Wednesday.
Mr Sharif has called for protests. "I want to tell the nation that it should stand up to this lawlessness, to this judgement, to this unconstitutional judgement, to this villainous act by the president," he told a news conference in Lahore yesterday.
Reuters