Pakistan faces new political crisis as Nawaz Sharif banned from office

Pakistan has been plunged back into political crisis after its Supreme Court banned its former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, from holding political office.

The court also ousted Mr Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League from power in Punjab province, where his brother Shahbaz was chief minister.

The ruling upheld a move by the country's election commission to ban the Sharif brothers from contesting elections because of past criminal convictions. But Mr Sharif accused President Asif Ali Zardari of orchestrating the ruling.

The ban on Shahbaz Sharif led to the immediate collapse of the state government in Punbjab. President Zardari immediately appointed Punjab's governor Salaman Taseer – a long-term opponent of the Sharif brothers - to run the provincial government as chief executive for the next two months pending the formation of a new administration.

Mr Zardari is also expected to try to persuade some of Nawaz Sharif's opposition assembly members to desert him and join a new coalition led by the ruling Pakistan People's Party.

Shares in Islamabad plunged five per cent amid fears of a return to the political instability of the 1990s when Mr Nawaz's PML party and the PPP of Mr Zardari's assassinated wife Benazir Bhutto persecuted each other and their supporters.

Those fears were heightened by a series of large protests in Lahore and other cities in Punjab, and also by calls by Mr Sharif for mass demonstrations to unite the opposition towards the ban. More