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| November 20, 2007 | Tuesday | Ziqa’ad 09, 1428 |
KARACHI: The anatomy of an ‘abnormal’ coup
KARACHI, Nov 19: Pakistan has seen several military coups and dictatorial rules in its 60-year history but General Pervez Musharraf will go down in history as the man who staged a coup against his own government.
“Musharraf’s is a novel case. He has the singular honour of having staged two coups. By staging the second one, he disbanded the very government over which he had absolute control,” Wajihuddin Ahmed, a former supreme court judge, told IPS during an interview.
There are other departures from a ‘normal coup’ too. “Instead of dissolving the assemblies, as often happens in a coup, he suspended the judiciary,” Justice Ahmed added.
“By suppressing the judiciary, the general is controlling the entire country,” said Nasir Aslam Zahid, a former chief justice of the Sindh High Court. Justice Zahid insists that the proclamation of emergency is, in fact, proclamation of the suspension of constitution to “get back at the judiciary” and “straighten the judges”. He was among the few judges who refused to take oath under the 1999 Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) Gen Musharraf had promulgated after toppling the government of then prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif.
Justice Ahmed, who contested the presidential elections against Gen Musharraf, last month, said: “Unlike his predecessors, the present military dictator seems to be in no mood to call it a day. Two generals (Field Marshal Ayub Khan in 1958 and Gen Yahya Khan in 1969) bowed out and the third just fell from the sky (referring to the mid-air explosion in which Gen Ziaul Haq died in 1988).”
On Nov 3, President Musharraf, who is also the Chief of Army Staff, found himself up against a Supreme Court which was on the verge of declaring his presidential candidature null and void. He sorted that out by declaring a state of emergency, replacing the constitution with a PCO and sacking all the judges of the higher courts.
In a televised address, Gen Musharraf justified his actions by saying that the country faced a challenge from religious radicals and that the judiciary was working at cross purposes to his government’s attempts to stamp out militancy.
“That shows his utter failure to rule,” argues Justice Ahmed. “In a way it’s an indictment of his eight years of rule, it’s self incriminatory,” he went on. “He confessed that there was complete lawlessness; that terrorism and radicalism were increasing; that the state had become ungovernable…then what was he doing all these years?”
Gen Musharraf is a spent force, say his opponents who want him to step down as army chief and hold free and fair elections after lifting the emergency.
“Far from it,” observed Justice Zahid. “He is still being seen as a pivotal force in the war on terror... why else is military aid by US not being suspended?”
And so while the world watches with muted criticism and legal eagles term his emergency “extra-constitutional” measure, most people are concerned at the ease with which the constitution has once again been swept aside.
“Ours is a history of unmaking of the constitution,” remarked another former Supreme Court judge — at one time the attorney general of Pakistan — who had refused to take oath under Gen Ziaul Haq’s PCO in 1981.
He terms the document “mother of all institutions” and a very “sacred code” that has been, time and again, made out to be a plaything… something like a football, to be kicked around,” mutilated and deformed beyond recognition.
Over the years the judiciary, a puppet in the hands of the rulers, had fallen from grace. It never felt the need to question the actions of the rulers, and upheld the changes made in the constitution once the rulers got them validated from the parliament.On comments that all this has resulted in the erosion of judiciary’s authority in the eyes of the common man, the former attorney general said: “It has been the judiciary’s own making when it surrendered to the military, gave power to one single person, swore allegiance to him and allowed him to do what he wished with the constitution. It has also strengthened the army to pass strictures and restrictions on the judiciary itself.”
Time and again, the apex court has been quite comfortably using the excuse of the “doctrine of necessity” to justify the illegitimacy of the usurpers. They have always claimed it was done to save the country from plunging into a crisis.
Pakistan got its first constitution in 1956, nine years after independence which was abrogated by Gen Ayub Khan when he imposed martial law in 1958. A new constitution was announced in 1962.
A decade passed during which half of the country was lost. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto assumed the role of both the president and first civilian chief martial law administrator in 1971and his government drafted another constitution which came into force in 1973. “This was the closest it came to keeping with the principles of parliamentary democracy,” recounted the former attorney general.
In 1977, Gen Ziaul Haq imposed martial law after Bhutto declared emergency and suspended the constitution. The general was removed from power only by his death, 11 years later.
Zia’s regime saw many laws introduced with scant respect for a national consensus or the values enshrined in the constitution.
Draconian as it was, Gen Zia’s martial law had better backing from the judiciary than the one declared 30 years later by Gen Musharraf. “In 1981, almost 90 per cent of the judges of the superior courts took the oath under a PCO and there was no furor; this time, the rulers are finding it exceedingly difficult to get new judges and unable to convince old ones to take (fresh) oath — and that is a great advancement,” said a senior Sindh High Court lawyer.
He attributes this reluctance to the stand lawyers and judges have taken, pointing out: “The struggle of lawyers and the judges supported by the civil society and the media will only bear fruit if political parties join in.”
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