Politicising the CJP affair

GOVERNMENT spokesmen have been saying all along that the lawyers and their supporters have unduly politicised a constitutional issue that should have been left to appropriate judicial forums to deliberate and settle. The lawyers’ movement started as a protest against General Musharraf’s thoughtless and arrogant encounter with the Chief Justice of Pakistan on March 9 and his administration’s rough and humiliating handling of him during the next three days.

Leaders of the bar associations and councils have declared repeatedly that they are striving not only to protect judicial independence but also to put an end to military rule and restore democracy, and that their movement will not stop until these goals are achieved. In other words, they are attempting to replace the present political system with one they regard as more desirable.

This part of their agenda is undoubtedly “political”. In an article in this newspaper (May 12), notable for its flowing and noble prose, Mr Munir A. Malik, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, argues that politics can be a fine calling. Relying on Aristotle, he views it as concern with the affairs of the state and its citizens.

Supremacy of the Constitution, rule of law, and the maintenance of fundamental rights affect the lives and well-being of all citizens and are thus pre-eminently political issues. It is in this sense, he says, that the lawyers’ movement is “political to the core”. Its concerns cannot be protected except in a democracy.

The lawyers’ interest in these issues and their interest in the restoration of democracy are thus “inextricably” connected. In all of this they are acting of their own accord. But if political parties and other social forces choose to support their cause, it is not only their right but obligation to do so.

There is more to the matter of judicial independence than the fact that the present government’s recent actions were calculated to subvert it. Judicial independence is lost not simply because an outsider is attempting to bend the judges to his will. It is lost only if and when judges become receptive to his promises of reward or amenable to his threats of penalties.

In the present situation, it is not the presidential reference against the Chief Justice but the intimidation, indignity and attempted coercion to which he was subjected that posed the threat to judicial independence. The attempt failed.

Government officials, including General Musharraf, have regretted and apologised for their high-handedness. They have relented on several of the moves they had initially made. Proceedings in the Supreme Judicial Council concerning the reference have been halted.

The “full court” is hearing the Chief Justice’s procedural and substantive objections to the government’s case. The protest against the government’s initial actions has been abundantly registered. In the resulting environment, the judges are likely to be free to speak and act as they deem fit. May we then say that the threat to judicial independence has passed, and that it is now time for the lawyers to take a break and stop their movement?

That, I suspect, is not going to happen. The lawyers may feel that while the threat has abated as a result of the popular protest, it may arise again with full force if things quiet down but military rule continues. Their struggle for the restoration of democracy may then continue even if its present scale and momentum decrease to a degree.

An intriguing change has come about in the temper of the times and the nation’s attitudes. Not only lawyers and politicians but other professionals, including poets, writers, and creative artists are making an appearance in the anti-government rallies.

I saw Ahmad Faraz and Kishwar Naheed (poets) and Bushra Rehman (novelist and pro-government MNA) on a television talk show the other day. Bushra Rehman said Ghalib, Dagh and Iqbal had never gone out on the streets carrying placards and shouting slogans, and that it was unbecoming of writers to participate in political rallies and demonstrations. Kishwar Naheed recalled that Hasrat Mohani, and, more recently Habib Jalib, had done so and even gone to jail for their political opinions and activism. She and Ahmad Faraz argued also that they were first and foremost citizens of Pakistan and as such it was both their right and duty to defend the cause of liberty and democracy.

The opposition to the present regime had lately been in disarray and running out of steam. Seeing that the judicial crisis had aroused the people at large, they decided to make common cause with the lawyers and other protesters.

To the best of my remembrance, none of the major political parties in the country has ever before been agitated about judicial independence. PML and the PPP each tried to seduce, intimidate, and harass members of the higher judiciary when it was in power. The three Islamic parties, ANP and Tehrik-i-Istaqlal have never had the chance to manipulate judges.

But I have never found any of them perturbed over the Supreme Court’s invocation of the doctrine of necessity to legitimise military coups. They have jumped on to the anti-Musharraf, pro-judiciary bandwagon not because they are zealously devoted to judicial independence, but because they see it as the rising tide and they have chosen to swim with it.

Before March 9 their own marches and demonstrations were fizzling out. They have gained greater visibility by associating with the pro-CJP movement.

They are synchronising their own rallies and demonstrations with the Chief Justice’s travel plans as he goes to various cities in the country to address bar associations. Dr Farooq Sattar of the MQM has recently “accused” them of exploiting the pro-judiciary protest for their own purpose of destabilising the present government.

This is true, but it need not be stated as an allegation. The opposition parties are unequivocally committed to the removal of Gen Musharraf’s government, and in pursuing that goal, which is generally regarded as worthy, they are entitled to make use of the opportunities that come their way.

Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry says his objective in travelling to places to address lawyers is entirely non-political. That may be true. But he must know also that regardless of his own inclination he has become the focal point of a tumultuous anti-Musharraf movement.

The opposition political parties are able to put up a good show in various cities because he is visiting there. Their meetings and rallies would not amount to much if they did not coincide with his presence in those places at the time. His partisans will argue that he is entitled to accept speaking engagements and travel to keep them, and that he is not responsible for what opposition political parties and others do where he goes.

This, again, is undoubtedly true. But there is another aspect of the matter, which might also be considered. A few weeks ago, when I was in Lahore, I came across quite a few people who maintained that even if the Chief Justice had used his official position to advance his son’s career, that was no big deal, for others in high places did the same.

Kunwar Idris, on the other hand, wrote in this newspaper that, yes, many others did use their official power and prestige to promote the personal interests of their friends and relatives, but that which was acceptable on the part of ministers, generals and politicians would not do for a judge.

That is true also. In pre-independence India, judges, especially members of the higher judiciary, remained aloof from public gatherings, limited their social interaction to close relatives and friends, refrained from expressing their opinions on social or political issues except possibly in the course of hearings in the courtroom or their judgments in the cases they settled.

This tradition of restraint changed to some extent after independence. Judges began to appear in public places and some of them addressed gatherings. But none of them addressed any kind of rallies, processions or demonstrations.

Justice Chaudhry has been addressing groups of lawyers. His message on all of these occasions has been essentially the same: supremacy of the Constitution, rule of law, fundamental rights and judicial independence, and the caveat that none of these can be secure except in a democracy.

Insofar as the lawyers insist that their judicial and political agendas are inter-connected, Justice Chaudhry’s appearance and participation in their rallies had already been taking on a political colouring. But the gun battles between his supporters and the pro-government forces, including the MQM cadres, and the large number of the resulting deaths and casualties, have doubtless made him a political person. He did not want this to happen, but it did.

His message to the lawyers is well known to them and all of us by now. If their movement continues, then the next time they invite him to address their meetings he might consider faxing the text of his speech to them, instead of travelling to the venue to deliver it in person. That would take the fanfare out of this exercise and make it appropriately sedate in the old judicial tradition.

If and when the Supreme Judicial Council gets down to real business, it may find that the allegations against Justice Chaudhry are frivolous or unfounded, in which case he will be reinstated.

In that event, having been vindicated, but in the meantime having become a political person, even if against his own wishes, he may wish to resign his office. Following the developments of the last several weeks, it may not be appropriate for him to serve as the Chief Justice of Pakistan.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US.
Email: anwarsyed@cox.net

Where lies the responsibility?

THE Economist of London described General Musharraf’s autobiography as “laughingly vainglorious”. That description equally fits his reaction to the gang warfare and pillage in Karachi on May 12. Three days and 40 deaths later, according to a report in this newspaper, he decided to deal with the killers and arsonists with an iron hand.

A “poised and composed” president, says another report, has counselled his nervous allies to concentrate on his election and later on their own, and leave it to him to handle the current situation which poses no threat to him or to them. For the trouble in Karachi he has put the blame on the ‘non-functional’ Chief Justice and his counsel Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan.

No matter where the blame lies (most would disagree with the president), the responsibility for saving the lives and property of the people lies squarely with the government.

In that, the provincial and central governments both failed, completely and miserably. Gangs ruled the streets of Karachi while the police and even the Rangers, if seen anywhere, were bystanders.

How one wishes (surely this wish is shared by every citizen) that the president, instead of delivering his iron-hand warning from Islamabad, had come down to Karachi and expressed his sorrow and sympathy the way Colonel John Nicholson, commander in the American Marines, had done at Jalalabad where his men, enraged by a suicide bomb attack, shot dead 19 innocent Afghans by the wayside.

This is what Nicholson said addressing an audience of the bereaved: “I stand before you today deeply, deeply ashamed and terribly sorry that Americans have killed and wounded innocent Afghan people.”

Gen Musharraf’s expression of penitence on the death of a larger number of his own people, matching Colonel Nicholson’s intensity was necessary but did not come.

It would have been in his political interest too but the power game makes its own merciless calculations.

The MQM coordinator Farooq Sattar’s apology did not match the enormity of the tragedy nor could he be speaking for any of the three governments — district, provincial or central — for he is part of none.

Besides the bloodshed, so extensive was the blockade on that day that even the judges had to climb over the boundary wall of the Sindh High Court to get to their chambers. Whether it was sheer complacency or actual complicity on the part of the law-enforcement authorities, the three governments remain equally culpable.

Every government at the political level, and that too in an election year, has its aims and chooses its means, fair or foul, to achieve them. The same is also true of the opposition. Law and order take a back seat in the priorities of both.

Maintaining public order in all situations, irrespective of party aims or interests, thus becomes the duty of the permanent civil service assisted by the police, paramilitary and even military when called out. With the passage of time, the civil service has ceased to be permanent and the administration of law and order has been made an adjunct of politics.

Before Gen Musharraf’s devolution plan took hold, the powers and responsibilities of officials responsible for law and order were clearly defined and known to the people. Not any longer. In the lawlessness that swamped Karachi on May 12 and on the two days following, no one appeared on the scene to exercise this power or to acknowledge this responsibility. No one can be punished, even if it is so intended, for no one was in charge.

Under the system and laws that Gen Musharraf abrogated, this power and responsibility vested in the district magistrate. There was no ambiguity about it nor escape from it. In the new system, the law and order powers and responsibility are diffused, and control over the law-enforcement agencies is divided between a variety of commissions and the three governments mentioned earlier.

If one person were to be named on whom this responsibility rests it is the nazim whom the new law requires to “perform functions relating to law and order in his district.” But the law doesn’t say what these functions are and how the nazim is to perform them.

It is now for the people to say whether Mustafa Kamal ever made an appearance at the rioting scene in Karachi on May 12 and on the days following. Or were he to be around and willing could he be trusted to take control of law and order when his party — the MQM — was being widely accused of disturbing it.

The Aaj TV host should have been looking for the nazim and not for the home secretary when his studio came under gunfire. The home secretary sits at a policy desk in the secretariat and is not expected to chase rioters on the streets. But then, could the Aaj TV host expect the nazim to intervene when the attackers, he suspected, came from the latter’s party?

Three lessons emerge from Karachi’s costly mayhem. One, the country cannot do without a professional and impartial law and order administration. Two, officially sponsored rallies are invariably counterproductive, and so was the president’s at Islamabad. Three, a caretaker government of national consensus should be formed here and now to organise elections under a chief election commissioner who is as fiercely independent as was India’s maverick T.N. Seshan.

The course of events in Pakistan’s politics has never been easy to predict but the kind of fervour and despondency that now reside together in the body politic strongly suggest that time is fast running out not for the government alone but also for the opposition.

Another round of irresponsible behaviour and violence like that of May 12 and the curtain may come down on the political scene as a whole.

Remarkable, however, is the complacency of the government on the disorder that paralysed Karachi. After 40 deaths and three days of anarchy, the prime minister had the gall to say that the city has been saved, or plainly put, got away lightly, and the Sindh chief minister wants the gory chapter closed. No one, it seems, will ever be held to account.

With mounting tension and repeated warnings of terrorist strikes weeks ahead of May 12, no district magistrate of the old times worth his salt would have permitted the MQM rally to be held on that day. And if the administration apprehended factional clashes on the arrival of the suspended Chief Justice, the district magistrate would have issued an order (not just made requests) banning the Chief Justice’s entry into Karachi.

The enforcement of law and order sometimes requires tough decisions by putting careers at risk, if necessary. The administration is not all about plots, promotions and extensions.

The Simpsons

WHILE cartoons appealing to adults have long been popular in Asian and European societies, in the Anglo-Saxon world there has been nothing quite like The Simpsons. It is 20 years since The Simpsons first appeared on television, and in that time the animated comedy has maintained high ratings. This evening the 400th episode is shown in the US. Its success lies not only in its ability to work on so many levels (to quote Homer Simpson) but also in its adherence to basic comic values of character, plot and tension. The first President Bush was entirely wrong when he said in 1992: "We're going to keep trying to strengthen the American family, to make them more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons."

In fact the Simpsons is the most idealised portrayal of an American life on US television: a nuclear family with caring parents and bright children in an American suburb with an active community life. The family even attend church — like much of middle America, but a fact rarely acknowledged by US networks. The Simpsons has spawned an industry of clever animation — South Park and Spongebob Squarepants owe their existence to the yellow-skinned family from Springfield. Long may Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie rule.

— The Guardian