Lose the noose, the Lion’s way

An about turn under duress

When Asif Zardari’s reign of the Islamic Republic commenced five years ago, one of the first things his regime all but erased was the globally fast-fading practice of capital punishment. The noose was banished to isolation as the ranks of condemned convicts swelled and the state’s penitentiaries prepared to burst at the seams. The Pakistan Peoples Party stood against the scaffold as a matter of policy and principle. The aims and objectives of this hastily imposed moratorium are debatable, more so by the party’s political nemeses. Enter the Nawaz League. Since the minute the moratorium was imposed, the party’s affiliates and stalwarts had left no stone unturned and let no opportunity slip to criticize the forced cessation of justice, lambasting its arch political rival for ‘cowardice’ and ‘adopting foreign ideals’.

Both these accusations did have considerable weight behind them as was the opinion of the nation’s varied masses. The implementation of the ‘no-noose policy’ is quite a contentious issue considering the fact that over the last five years, convicts sentenced for crimes of heinous nature, everyone from rapists to serial killers, from would-be suicide bombers to assassins sit snugly behind bars knowing their fate is safe and secure until the day the president’s house is inhabited by Mr Zardari. A commutation of the sentence and a life behind bars does not necessarily mean prisons would be the permanent homes of the criminal class, as was demonstrated by the immensely publicized jailbreaks in Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan. Using these to fuel for its fire, the PML-N presented the moratorium as nothing more than a ‘paid leave’ for the country’s outlaws, for anyone with a hundred comrades and the requisite equipment can raid and release any number of criminals they deem fit. The PPP though was unmoved and promised to ignore execution so long as it held Pakistan’s presidency.

The PML-N too was adamant, or so it seemed until the party was threatened with ‘dire consequences’ by the country’s many terrorists, if their companions in the state’s jails were executed. For five years, the PML-N had claimed that the moratorium was unconstitutional, un-Islamic and pro-criminal. Recent events nonetheless seem to have bearded the lion because the most vocal critic of the policy, the Nawaz League has made alterations to its views, courtesy of the TTP and its intimidation. Political stances have been thrown into the wind as soon as the TTP warned of targeting the PML-N leadership if any of its members were executed. Instead of imposing a moratorium for the cause of humanity, the PML-N is now implementing the no-noose policy due to its fears and insecurities. It may be a convenient U-turn, but thanks to it, the party has lost all its and the country’s moral high ground, since it’s not executing convicts due to its love for humanity but instead due to its fear of the repercussion its top brass would face. The PML-N’s action will be no doubt be interpreted by miscreants as a sign of the state’s weakness. The Kalashnikov’s, the suicide bombers and threats are apparently more than enough to deal with the non-existent writ of the state.