At Penpoint
- Heading towards a new type of one-party state
The crises that seem to be seizing this government all seem to have corruption at their root. There seems to be an extension of fronts that lead to new questions, about timing. That accountability of politicians is to continue was shown by the clash between PPP workers and the police at NAB’s Rawalpindi office, which led to the arrest of party MNAs, when party chief Asif Zardari and his son Bilawal had appeared in response to a summons in the money laundering case against them.
It was not just members of the two largest opposition parties. The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement was also to be ‘fixed.’ Its two MNAs, Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazir, led a crowd attacking an Army checkpost in Waziristan Agency. The Army says they were backing a militant facilitator. They said the so-called facilitator was a peaceable local. Dawar and Wazir were labelled traitors, and the PTM was accused of receiving Afghan and Indian money.
The arrest of Wazir, and later Dawar, took place, putting the lid on the episode for the time being. However, the possibility of the tribal areas once again erupting into unrest, and the unrest spreading to the settled areas which are part of KP, might cause the sort of unrest which is being witnessed in Balochistan, through the Baloch Liberation Army. However, the PTM was started because a tribesman was killed by the police in Karachi. The objection of tribesmen to being killed without cause will only be worsened by the shooting of more tribesmen by the Army.
That this incident is greatly serious is because there is the danger of disaffection spreading among the Pashtuns, not just in the military, but in the civil service. It should not be forgotten that the first two CMLAs belonged to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as did one COAS after that, Gen Abdul Waheed. Pashtuns were part of the ruling elite that excluded East Pakistanis, and which excludes Baloch nowadays.
At the moment the judiciary is the last check on the executive, with the legislative branch now in the control of the PTI
Though the MNAs who are accused of treason by having led the charge have been arrested, the Speaker did not issue their production orders despite several requests. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter the two constituencies remained unrepresented in the Budget session. If indeed they are treasonous, it is for a court to convict them, the Election Commission to unseat them, and their constituencies to elect new, presumably more patriotic, representatives. The right of a constituency to representation is the basis of all parliamentary privilege, which includes so much freedom of speech that the libel law does not apply. (Indeed, the defence against a charge levied in an assembly speech is to challenge the legislator to repeat the charge ‘outside the House’; thus making himself liable to being sued.)
The failure, or rather obdurate refusal, of the Speaker to issue production orders puts a question mark over their production for PPP co-Chairman Asif Zardari, who was arrested by NAB after his pre-arrest bail was cancelled, or PML-N chief Mian Shehbaz Sharif, who returned on Sunday for the Budget session.
There is another issue arising, which the establishment cannot really answer, but which has faced Pakistan before: a Bangladesh situation. If constituents want a separate state, will a representative’s attempt to voice these aspirations be treason? The establishment would think so, but then where does freedom of speech go?
Then there is the Balochistan situation. Much has been said about Mr Justice Qazi Faez Isa of the Supreme Court, and not only is it to be noted that he was elevated to the Supreme Court from the Balochistan High Court, where he had been Chief Justice, but that he is the son of Qazi Isa, who joined the Quaid-e-Azam in his struggle to have the province join Pakistan. Balochistan has a tradition of producing judges with a streak of independence. Mr Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who had so riled President Pervez Musharraf that he dismissed him, and whose restoration sparked the last lawyers’ movement, had also been elevated from the Balochistan High Court. It is also worth noting that neither Mr Justice Isa nor Chief Justice Iftikhar were ethnically Baloch, Mr Justice Isa being grandson of a Hazara migrant from Afghanistan, Chief Justice Iftikhar the son of a policeman from Jullundur.
Justice Isa was the judge who authored the judgement in the case of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah sit-in at Faizabad, in which strictures were passed against sensitive agencies, the PTI and others, who have all filed review petitions. He also was the judge in the Quetta blast case, in which so many lawyers were killed, and in which he passed strictures against the then Interior Minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan.
Mr Justice Isa has been accused of non-declaration of assets of family, which have been revealed recently as information, but which have not been taken cognisance of by the concerned tax authority. The federal government has referred the matter to the Supreme Judicial Council, along with that of a judge of the Sindh High Court. The Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mr Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, who chairs the SJC, has asked that the judiciary be trusted.
The combination of circumstances has been completed by the Budget. The government’s primary task was one of protection of its backers from the economic and other storms. The recent sentencing of a lieutenant general and a brigadier for spying indicate that the military can conduct its own accountability, but also that its ranks need not be examined. The convicts passed nuclear secrets to the USA. What prevented others passing conventional secrets to India? In this example too, the problem seems to be corruption. The admission of corruption among the military seems to undermine the superiority assumed by those who risk their lives to defend our frontiers.
These indications do not bode well for the PTI government. The attempt to tame the judiciary will depend on how much material like that against Mr Justice Isa is available to pursue. The judges need not be guilty of wrongdoing. There need only be guilty of past actions which may be interpreted as providing such proof. There need not be such tactics as an SJC reference. It need only be hinted at.
If the judiciary does crumble, then it is likely that the country would be heading to a kind of one-party state.
The key to the whole situation is the judiciary. It is at the moment the ‘last man standing.’ It is the last check on the executive, with the legislative branch now in the control of the PTI.
