THE constitutional crisis triggered by the filing of the presidential reference against the Chief Justice of Pakistan has naturally evolved into a full-blown political crisis. Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry is no longer the only person whose survival in office is at stake. The political survival of General Musharraf also hangs in the balance.

The tradition of judicial deference to military rulers was shaken to the core on March 9, 2007, when Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry refused to resign. Had he followed the custom, he would have tendered his resignation quietly and disappeared into oblivion. But the unexpected happened.

This was a vital moment which was seized by the legal fraternity. While the judiciary is the custodian of the Constitution, lawyers are the custodians of the judiciary. The lawyers, very ably led by some of the finest amongst them, immediately realised the intensity of the assault on their institution and responded with unprecedented determination. They came out to protect the judiciary and launched a peaceful protest. This was reported by a vibrant and independent media. Had the legal fraternity not thwarted this coup against the judiciary, the Chief Justice would still be under detention and perhaps removed from office by now.

When the Chief Justice came out to address the bar associations, people came out in their hundreds and thousands to greet the man who had defied the dictator. This unnerved the government. When the Chief Justice came to address the Sindh High Court Bar Association at Karachi on May 12, 2007, the government responded in a manner unworthy of any civilised authority.

Fascism in its ugliest manifestation was on display. In a well-planned manner, the law enforcement agencies completely disappeared and the city was handed over to gunmen and hooligans. The High Court building was surrounded by men who blocked access to the court. An independent TV channel became a shooting target. The city was burnt and dozens were killed.

The Chief Justice maintained a dignified silence. General Musharraf displayed callous disregard and an unbelievable degree of abandon. He was riding high, celebrating victory on the shoulders of a “managed” crowd transported to Islamabad to show his strength. A paper tiger floating on imaginary waves.

While the government and its allies successfully prevented the Chief Justice of Pakistan from addressing the bar association in Karachi, the people paid a very heavy price for their pyrrhic victory. It is a victory unworthy of joy. All dictatorships achieve such victories moments before their demise.

What needs to be realised is that the issue is not the removal of a judge or even the Chief Justice of Pakistan. No one is above the law. The Constitution provides a mechanism for the removal of judges. The legal fraternity has not come out in protest just because a reference has been filed against the Chief Justice of Pakistan. What they are protesting against is the logic behind the filing of the reference and the manner in which it was done, particularly with regard to the treatment meted out to a sitting Chief Justice.

If there were grounds warranting a complaint and inquiry against the Chief Justice of Pakistan under Article 209 of the Constitution of Pakistan, why was he being compelled to resign from his office? Why did a uniformed president call other generals to overawe him? It is beyond belief that General Musharraf wanted his resignation on the grounds enumerated in the reference.

Going by this reasoning, hardly public functionary would be able to remain in office. Starting from General Musharraf down to the lowest public functionary, no one could hold any public office if the grounds enumerated in the reference were made applicable to holders of public office.

The real reasons are not those enumerated in the presidential reference. The real reasons are different. The Chief Justice was not acting according to the desire of the government.

The president was upset by the Chief Justice taking note of areas considered by the government as “no go”. The president wanted to be re-elected as president and remain in uniform. The Chief Justice was reading the Constitution differently.

The prime minister and his fellows in the corporate world were upset with the verdict in the Steel Mills case. The Chief Justice could even inquire about other dubious privatisations. He could ask about the bungling in the stock exchange.

The chief ministers of Punjab and Sindh were upset because the president was upset. Senior bureaucrats were upset because they had been summoned to the court by the Chief Justice and treated in the manner in which they daily treated ordinary citizens in their offices. Some others were upset because Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry would remain Chief Justice for a very long time. Because so many powerful people were upset with the Chief Justice, he had to go — or so they thought.

Though apparently highly damaging to the political stability of the country, the present crisis may also have a salutary effect. It provides us a unique opportunity to restore the rule of law and constitutional governance which have eluded us so far. The Constitution has repeatedly been subverted by military interventions in politics. Sadly, much of it has been with the connivance of the judiciary.

Now is the opportunity to change things. This has rightly been described as a defining moment. We may either seize the moment or squander the opportunity. Like all defining moments, it carries promises as well as risks. The risks are enormous but so is the opportunity.

While the military had absolutely no role in the independence of Pakistan, it has been calling the shots from the beginning. Virtually every elected government has been overthrown by the military. All popularly elected leaders were made an example of – through assassination, execution or exile. The intoxication of absolute power has benumbed the military’s other faculties. There are no checks on its power. The only restraint that exists is self-imposed. It has fought no war in living memory and suffered no defeat to weaken its resolve. It has a short memory. Its officers are now to accustomed to the luxuries of civilian life. And the Americans are too dependent on it.

Pitched against this formidable institution are the hapless people of Pakistan. But the defiance of one man has reinvigorated their spirit and revived their hopes. At this crucial moment, the Chief Justice, standing alone, was perhaps clueless about the future. Yet he leapt into the dark with unmatched courage. For this action alone, his name will be immortalised. To quote Mary Gordon, a recent biographer of Joan of Arc, “She stands for triumph of the invisible over the visible, of the potency of pure intentions, of acts that shimmer and endure beyond the life of the actor or the efficacy of the acts.”

Today the people look to the judiciary to redeem its honour as well as their own. For the first time in our country’s history, the judiciary is pitched against an all powerful military ruler but it is not alone. While the court decides the case, it acts according to the law not public opinion. But it is good if the court is aware of public opinion. As American Judge Cardozo said, “Great tides and currents which engulf the rest of the men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by.”

THE 34 who met a violent death in Karachi on its black day on Saturday had not even been buried when the blame game started. President Pervez Musharraf placed the onus for the tragic happenings in Karachi squarely on Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and the opposition parties.

Were not they the ones to politicise the reference issue? And were not they the ones to proceed to Karachi against official advice when the government had reports that there was going to be trouble on May 12?

The opposition retaliated by blaming the Sindh administration — specifically the MQM which is a coalition partner in the provincial government — for being the first to unleash violence and for letting it spiral out of control. The police were either conspicuous by their absence or stood idly by watching the carnage.

With the gory drama being played out in full view of the electronic media, people can judge for themselves what actually happened on Saturday and thereafter. With the country so deeply polarised no one seemed prepared to listen to the other, even though innocent lives were being lost.

Most of those who died were ordinary people who have no political stakes. That is the sad lesson to emerge from May 12. The feeling among the common man is that no one really cares what happens to the people of Pakistan – those millions who have no access to what we, the fortunate ones, take for granted such as ‘roti, kapra, makaan’ and also healthcare and education.

Over the years generally and in recent months specifically, the common man has been increasingly marginalised. He does not have much of a say in what is happening, neither does he want to have a say because he views politics cynically.

A very common refrain is, ‘We don’t care which party rules, for no leader is really interested in addressing our basic concerns.’ This depoliticisation of the people is the biggest tragedy Pakistan has suffered. And we owe this setback not just to the military governments, whose contribution to the destruction of healthy politics has been the greatest.

The incidents of May 12 have reinforced this belief. As it is, the legal dimension of the presidential reference and the issue of the independence of the judiciary, so dear to the heart of the intelligentsia and the politicised liberal minority, has been pushed into the background. Now the matter is seen as being purely political thanks to the induction of the opposition parties into what was being described as a legal issue.

True, the lawyers appealed to the political parties to keep a distance from them in their struggle. They probably understood the implications of playing politics. But they must have also realised the futility of trying to keep the political parties out of the fray. After all, the counsel of the Chief Justice, Aitzaz Ahsan, is a high profile member of the Pakistan People’ Party.

One wonders whether this turn of events was anticipated by the Chief Justice and his advisers who now have no control over events. They would have asked that, in an election year, could one really expect a political party seeking to contest the polls to refrain from gaining mileage from an issue that it could use to mobilise popular support? More so, when the parties in the opposition have still not chalked out a clear cut strategy at this crucial stage in Pakistan’s political and constitutional history.

With the exception of a few serious members who have been doing their homework on various bills introduced in the National Assembly, they have not much to show by way of preparation of party programmes.

For them the presidential reference came as a godsend opportunity and they were quick to jump on the bandwagon. This has been done by all parties on both sides of the divide and should have been expected.

Should this be seen as the start of the election campaign? That is how one would interpret the “rallyisation” of politics in Pakistan today. President Musharraf was caught in the same trap. But this strategy has its pitfalls. The violence that gripped Karachi should not surprise anyone.

Since the mid-eighties when the MQM emerged on the scene with the army’s backing, the nature of politics in the city has radically changed. To gain supremacy here a party must muster substantial muscle power. This phenomenon has destroyed the peace of Karachi because a party’s capacity to put up an impressive show of strength is seen as the key to its electoral success. Rallies help parties keep their supporters in a permanent state of mobilisation.

In this scenario, the MQM’s Karachi rally on May 12 was also intended to warn the other parties that they were encroaching on what the Muttahida perceives to be its own turf. No chances were to be taken. Hence the overkill in the form of blocking of routes, intimidation of the public and preventing the Chief Justice from proceeding towards the high court.

It is a pity that politics in Pakistan has degenerated into one of rabble-rousing in the street. In this state of affairs, the symbols that have begun to matter are those which help to subdue by force all others, even those who could present a remote challenge.

The biggest tragedy is that those in power — be they in Islamabad, Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi or Quetta — are taking recourse to these tactics. Being already in a position of advantage they can afford to be magnanimous. But they will not. They have already lost the commitment of the people who are apathetic. These rallies are deceptive for apart from the hard core workers others are herded out there. That is why muscle power counts.

All this bodes ill for Pakistan. Society is already fragmented. Will we regress into ethnic violence? In the absence of participatory politics rooted in the masses, will we slide back to square one?

CORPORATE social responsibility often resembles the adventures of The Good Soldier Svejk. In 1914, about to be conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army, Svejk puts on his old uniform and a volunteer's buttonhole and, waving his borrowed crutches and shouting “To Belgrade, to Belgrade!”, has his landlady push him to the recruiting office in a bath chair.

Jaroslav Hasek's marvellous creation is lauded by the newspapers for his extraordinary patriotism. By this means Svejk attempts to persuade the authorities that he is doing everything he can to get to the front, even if, to his enormous regret, his rheumatism prevents him from having his brains blown out. By noisily volunteering to subject themselves to stricter standards, the corporations try to pre-empt the rules which might otherwise have been imposed on them. This, they hope, will allow them to participate only when and how they see fit.

In Svejk's case it didn't work. His patriotism was rewarded with enemas and emetics until his rheumatism was miraculously cured. The corporations, on the other hand, always seem to persuade the authorities of their undying commitment to the causes they espouse, which ensures that they can enter the war on their own terms. This seems to be the way that the global campaign for road safety is going.

Death and injury on the roads is the world's most neglected public health issue. Almost as many people die in road accidents - 1.2 million a year - as are killed by malaria or tuberculosis. Around 50 million are injured. Some 85 per cent of these accidents take place in developing countries. The poor get hurt much more often than the rich, as they walk or cycle or travel in overloaded buses. The highest death rate is among children walking on the roads.

The annual economic cost to developing countries, in lost productivity alone, is $65-$100bn, roughly the same as the amount they receive in foreign aid. I caught a glimpse of the human cost when I was hospitalised in northern Kenya. Some of the men on the ward had bullet or axe wounds inflicted in tribal wars, others were dying of HIV/Aids, but over half had been smashed up in road accidents. They could not afford good painkillers, and sobbed and screamed through the night. It looked like a scene from the first world war.

The problem is likely to become much worse. By 2020, according to the World Bank, deaths from road accidents are expected to fall by 28 per cent in rich nations but to rise by 83 per cent in poorer ones. By 2030, they will overtake the deaths caused by malaria. But while $1.9bn of foreign aid will be spent on tackling malaria over the next five years, the annual global aid budget for road safety is less than $10m. This issue has been neglected partly because it is something the rich inflict on the poor, and partly because it is widely perceived as an unavoidable price of doing business - as the global transportation industry expands, so must its human costs. Governments are just beginning to wake up to the problem. But the corporations got there first.

In 1999, at the invitation of the World Bank, the motor and oil companies joined something called the Global Road Safety Partnership. It was supposed to bring together "governments and governmental agencies, the private sector and civil society organisations". But its executive committee contains no one from a civil society organisation and only two representatives of government. BP, Total, DaimlerChrysler, General Motors, Michelin and Volvo, however, are all represented.

Professor Ian Roberts at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine compared the prevalence of certain words in the partnership's annual reports to their prevalence in a similar report written by the World Health Organisation. In the partnership's reports, he found a pattern of systematic neglect of pedestrians and cyclists. In the WHO's report, "speed limit" occurred 17 times in every 10,000 words; in the partnership's reports, just once. "Pedestrian" was used 69 times by the WHO, and 15 times by the partnership; "buses" and "cyclists" were mentioned 13 and 32 times respectively by the WHO, and not once by the partnership. "Reclaiming the streets for walking and cycling," he notes, "will not serve the interests of the car makers."

Instead, the Global Road Safety Partnership emphasised better training for drivers and better safety education for children. These measures do not interfere with the commercial interests of the transport industry. Neither, according to peer-reviewed papers Prof Roberts cites, do they work.

The motor industry also appears to dominate the most prominent international body on road safety. Three weeks ago, the racing driver Michael Schumacher wrote a column - quite a good one - for these pages to mark Global Road Safety Week. He described himself as a member of the "independent Commission for Global Road Safety". The commission launched the Make Roads Safe campaign, which is modelled on Make Poverty History. But how "independent" is it?

It was established by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile Foundation, which is run by motoring and motorsports associations. Of the eight commissioners, one is an executive of General Motors, one runs the Bridgestone Tyre Corporation, one is a trustee of the FIA Foundation, one is chairman of the FIA Foundation and a president of the Automobile Club of Italy and one is Michael Schumacher. The commission's secretary is the director general of the FIA Foundation.

Its report is better than the material published by the Global Road Safety Partnership. There is more emphasis on speed limits, road design and traffic management. But there are some odd gaps and contradictions. It complains that "participation by middle- and low-income countries in the existing international road safety organisations ... is low" and that there is a "lack of ownership" of road safety programmes by the governments and people of developing countries. So why do all its own members come from the G8 nations? The commission prescribes an "action plan" for global road safety, to be run by something called the Global Road Safety Facility. This - surprise, surprise - also turns out to have been launched and partly funded by the FIA Foundation.

Most importantly, it calls for the developing nations to follow the path taken by richer countries in reducing deaths and injuries. But at no point does it mention that much of this reduction was the result of cyclists and pedestrians being driven off the roads. This is a much bigger issue for poor nations - where the great majority of people who use roads do not own cars - than for rich ones. Is this the vision: that the space now used by pedestrians and cyclists and ox carts and rickshaws is surrendered to car drivers? If so, it might reduce fatalities, but it would also represent a classic act of enclosure, through which the rich are able to secure the resources of the poor. –– Dawn/Guardian Service