Standing up
Salman Taseer, 1944-2011 |
The police are now investigating whether Qadri acted alone or was part of a wider plot. Either way, it appears that his bosses failed to scrutinise his links with extremist groups for security clearance. If investigators find that Qadri did not act alone, the political fallout – in Punjab province in particular and the country in general – will be massive. Punjab, the country's largest and most influential province, is ruled by a coalition government of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif (PML-N). Recently, these two main political forces have been drifting away from each other, and a war of words between them could quickly drag the country back to the politics of confrontation last seen during the 1990s.