Pakistan's army pushes for government shake-up

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The Pakistani military, angered by the inept handling of the country's devastating floods and alarmed by a collapse of the economy, is pushing for a shake-up of the elected government and, in the longer term, even the removal of President Asif Ali Zardari and his top lieutenants.

The military, preoccupied by a war against militants and reluctant to assume direct responsibility for the economic crisis, has made clear it is not eager to take over the government, as it has many times before, military officials and politicians said.

But the government's performance since the floods, which have left 20 million people homeless and the nation dependent on handouts from skeptical foreign donors, has laid bare the deep underlying tensions between military and civilian leaders.

U.S. officials, too, say it has left them increasingly disillusioned with Zardari, a deeply unpopular president who was elected 21/2 years ago on a wave of sympathy after the assassination of his wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

In a meeting Monday that was played on the front page of Pakistan's newspapers, the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, confronted the president and his prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, over incompetence and corruption in the government.

According to the media and Pakistani officials familiar with the conversation, the general demanded that they dismiss at least some ministers in the oversized 60-member cabinet, many of whom face corruption charges.

The civilian government has so far resisted the general's demand. But the meeting was widely interpreted by the Pakistani media, which has grown increasingly hostile to the president, as a rebuke to the civilian politicians and as having pushed the government to the brink.

Since the floods, the government has defended its handling of the crisis, arguing any government would have been overwhelmed by thescale.

Still, it is clear that Kayani, head of the country's most powerful institution and the one that has taken the lead in the flood crisis, has ratcheted up the pressure on the government.

Having secured an exceptional three-year extension in his post from Zardari in July, Kayani appears determined to prevent the economy from bankruptcy. Military officers in the main cities have been talking openly and expansively about their contempt for the Zardari government and what they term the economic calamity, an unusual candor, reporters and politicians said.

"The gross economic mismanagement by the government is at the heart of it," said Rifaat Hussain, a professor of international relations at Islamabad University and a confidant of the military. "And there is the rising public disaffection with the Pakistani Peoples Party under Zardari and Gilani."

Much of the rising distain for the government has to do with the perception among the media and the public of the callous and inept handling of the floods by the nation's wealthy ruling class.