Once again Pakistan is plunged into another major political crisis marred by sectarian violence. It comes after the Supreme Court ruled that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shabaz could not run for election.

Shabaz Nawaz is the incumbent Chief Minister of Punjab, a stronghold of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), a party led by the two brothers.

Nawaz Sharif, elected twice prime minister before being ousted by military strongman Pervez Musharraf, called the court’s decision “a conspiracy and retaliation’ by President Zardari for his and his brother’s support for the lawyers’ movement for an independent judiciary and the reinstatement of Chaudhri Iftikhar as chief Justice of Pakistan.

For the two brothers, “this is not a court decision but an edict and the entire nation knows where this edict came from.”

The tone of the criticism adopted by Nawaz Sharif against President Asif Ali Zardari is “most unfortunate, uncalled for and not commensurate with the status of a leader who has twice been the prime minister of the country”, Pakistan People’s Party spokesman Farhatullah Babar said on Wednesday.

“The federal government has nothing to do with the Supreme Court’s decision” against the Sharif brothers and “we commiserate” with them, said Federal Information Minister Sherry Rehman. “This is not what we sought according to our national reconciliation policy.”

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) on Wednesday expressed regret over the Supreme Court’s decision.

“This apparent politicisation of the rule of law has further devalued the respect” for the highest court in the land, HRCP Chairwoman Asma Jahangir said.

The “HRCP warns that the country needs political reconciliation rather than polarisation,” which will instead create a vacuum open to political “adventurism,” she added.