Interview with Nandan Unnikrishnan – senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, India. By Yekaterina Kudashkina.

There are certain worrying aspects in the removal of Gilani as the Prime Miniter, worrying in the sense that it is not very clear whether this is a case of overreach of the Pakistani judiciary, is this some kind of settling of scores which the judiciary is indulging. The second thing is that Gilani along with the President Zardari was able to create a lot of space for the civil society, particularly vis-à-vis the military. And those democratic games hopefully will not be lost with his departure.

In India we are of course closely monitoring the situation in Pakistan. India is always very interested in whatever is happening in Pakistan. And India is probably the only country where there are more than one billion experts on Pakistan. So, you have a thousand opinions on the development there. But right now I would say that yes, there are certain worrying aspects in the removal of Gilani as the Prime Miniter, worrying in the sense that it is not very clear whether this is a case of overreach of the Pakistani judiciary, is this some kind of settling of scores which the judiciary is indulging. The second thing is that Gilani along with the President Zardari was able to create a lot of space for the civil society, particularly vis-à-vis the military. And those democratic games hopefully will not be lost with his departure.

One of the opposition leaders even said that he does not rule out martial law being introduced in Pakistan as a result of these developments. Do you share this pessimistic vision?

Well, I do not see any immediate reasons for the military to intervene. The military would only probably intervene if there is a complete breakdown in the civilian Government, in other words if the PPP is unable to agree on a candidate to replace Gilani and there is a breakdown in terms of their ability to govern. I don’t think that is a scenario that is likely at this stage because the PPP seems to be in consultations about who is going to replace Gilani. And it may not be a usual business, neither this is looking as if it is going to result in either martial law or even in fresh elections.

How do you see the prospects for the PPP?

Well, in the long run of course there will be damage to the PPP overall because eventually the fact of the matter is that, what we in India at least have because we have these exercises regularly, we call the anti-incumbent effect. The incumbent in power always faces a negative backlash, so given that the PPP of course will be affected but predicting who is likely to win the next elections whenever they arrive, it is I think a very diverted exercise.

I would like to add that at this stage, in the last few months there is a tremendous improvement in India-Pakistan relations and at last there is a hope that we may be able to achieve some of the peace measures that were searched some time back – settlement of the Siachen controversy and some others. And Prime Minister Gilani to a large extent was an important player in this improvement of relations between the two countries. So, I only hope that his removal does not have a negative impact on the improvement of bilateral relations.

Sir, thank you so much. And just to remind you our guest speaker was Nandan Unnikrishnan – senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, India.

Yekaterina Kudashkina is the author and presenter at the Voice of Russia, Russia's first internationally broadcasted Radio. On air since 1929. 

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