Zardari’s new legal battle
While deliberating over Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s petition, the Supreme Court wanted to know if a political cell still existed at the Presidency. The Supreme Court was told that since September 2008 no such body was operating at the Presidency. The matter did not end there however. The CJ remarked that the head of state should not support any political group as under the constitution the president is the head of state and not the chief of a political party. While the observation was made in the context of Ghulam Ishaque Khan’s direction to distribute money among the IJI components, it was equally aimed at Zardari.
There is a perception that Zardari plays a key role in decisions taken in the name of the PPP and that both Gilani and Raja have acted on his advice. He issues directions to the National Assembly Speaker like the one telling her to expedite the formation of a parliamentary commission on Seraiki province, thus openly siding with the PPP against the PML-N. Further, Zardari acts as arbiter between the ruling coalition partners whenever mutual differences reach a breaking point. The MQM invariably turns up at Presidency whenever it has complaints against the Sindh chapter of the PPP.
There is no article in the constitution specifically debarring the president from taking part in politics. However, Article 41 (1) which states that the President of Pakistan shall be the Head of State and shall represent the unity of the republic can be interpreted to require political neutrality on his part. Unlike the prime minister, who is the parliamentary leader of the ruling party and thus frequently comes into focus during tussles between the government and its opponents, the president has to be a person above political strife. He has to be trusted by all parties to be seen to represent the unity of the republic.
This explains why in parliamentary democracies the head of state is either a thoroughly non-political figure, as in Britain, or relinquishes partisan political activities after being elected to the office as in other countries of the category. In India several outstanding non-political personalities have been elected as presidents while those having political affiliations have invariably suspended them while they were in the presidency. Pakistan has inherited a legacy wherein the heads of state turned the presidency into centres of intrigue against the opposition. They therefore failed to inspire confidence in the opposition parties.
Zardari had the choice to get elected as prime minister to be able to retain the office of the co-chairman. He preferred instead to be the president presumably because the office provided him immunity from litigation. He has failed to utilise the last four years to hand over the party office to someone else. It is argued that since he has transferred the powers accumulated by successive dictators in the office of the president to prime minister, it matters little if he was to continue to lead the PPP while retaining the ceremonial office of the head of state. But aren’t all heads of state in parliamentary democracies mere figureheads? Are they not simultaneously non partisan?
Perceptions count in politics no less than realities. The role being played by the president in running the affairs of the PPP and the ruling coalition has already made him a target of criticism. Three political parties including PML-N, PTI and JI have declared that with Zardari as President there could be no free and fair election.
The argument that Jinnah also held two offices would convince few. The Father of the Nation did so because the new born country was still being run under the Government of India Act 1935 rather than the consensus 1973 Constitution. Jinnah also retained the vice regal system under which the governors and civil servants were required to keep, in the words of Khalid B Saeed, ‘a close watch over the cabinet meetings and other activities of the politicians’. He dismissed the elected Chief Minister of NWFP within months of assuming the office of Governor General and the Sindh provincial government only months later. None in Pakistan would like to quote the precedents as they are irrelevant under the present constitutional dispensation.
The case of Zardari’s dual office which is being heard by a bench of the Lahore High Court is fast moving towards a conclusion. On May 12, the court ruled that Zardari should surrender the position of co-chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party and that the Presidency should not be used for political activities. “The use of Presidency for political activity is inconsistent with its sanctity, dignity, neutrality and independence. Therefore, it is expected that the president of Pakistan would cease the use of the premises of Presidency for political meetings of his party,” a four-judge bench of the LHC said in its orders.
At successive hearings of the case, last week, the court gave Zardari another chance to obey its orders directing the president’s counsel to appear before it on October 31 after taking instructions from his client. The issue can be delayed for a while but when it finally reaches the Supreme Court, the result wouldn’t be all that unpredictable.
Zardari’s counsel knows it is difficult to defend a president in a parliamentary democracy who is simultaneously acting as a party chief. The counsel has taken the unconvincing plea that Zardari is not the president of the ruling party which is PPP-Parliamentarian He is instead the president of PPP which is an altogether different entity neither registered with the Election Commission nor having an election symbol allotted to it. There is little likelihood of any court accepting the plea. It is widely understood that Makhdumn Amin Fahim, president of the PPP–Parliamentarian and Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, Secretary General of the party, are no more than decoration pieces. After the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Zardari is the supreme leader of the party whether one calls it PPP or PPP-Parliamentarian.
There may not be a political cell at the Presidency but the president remains the guide and mentor of the ruling party and will remain so during the elections. Compared to Ghulam Ishaque Khan Zardari wields much less clout to influence the elections. In 1990 elections, the presidency had become a powerful centre of political wheeling dealing because the army chief extended full support to GIK. H could thus order the ISI and MI to carry out the necessary political engineering to keep Benazir Bhutto out of power. The distribution of money was just one measure. The agencies used both threats and bribes to keep together the heterogeneous elements under the rubric of the IJI. A devastating propaganda campaign was launched against the PPP and underhand methods employed to achieve the results in the ISI-sponsored 1990 elections.
The PPP has revised its stand on writing the Swiss letter, indicating that it was averse to creating a standoff with the courts towards the fag end of it tenure Will it display similar flexibility regarding the holding of two offices?
The writer is a former academic and a political analyst.
