Thursday, August 07, 2008
By Ansar Abbasi
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan People's Party's double game was exposed on Wednesday with Law Minister Farooq A Naek doing it again, almost certainly with the blessings of Asif Ali Zardari. At the height of general optimism about the outcome of the dialogue between the coalition partners on Wednesday afternoon, the PML-N leaders abruptly left the Zardari House, leaving the whole country shocked.
While people were waiting for a joint press conference of the top coalition partners, everything became blurred and unpredictable when private television channels aired the breaking news about President Musharraf's approval to the PPP government's summary, seeking the reappointment of eight deposed judges of the Sindh High Court.
The N-Leaguers were obviously upset as to why such a summary was sent to the Presidency at a stage when the coalition partners were trying to reach an agreement on the thorny issues of President Musharraf's impeachment and the restoration of the deposed judges.
"It was like stabbing in our back," a PML-N source said, adding that the level of trust between the two parties had touched an all-time low. It was strange even for ordinary souls to observe that while the coalition partners were working on a solution to the judicial crisis, television channels started breaking the news about the reappointment of eight SHC deposed judges. Generally considered extremely non-serious attitude of the PPP government has now started haunting the whole nation.
The law minister and a few others in the government have been persuading the deposed judges since long to take a fresh oath to regain their lost positions. These background efforts were aimed at creating a rift among the deposed judges, most of whom had simply rejected the Zardari-Naek formula. President Musharraf, too, was taken into confidence by the government, which publicly was moving to impeach the president.
A PML-N source claimed that Naek moved the said summary to the Presidency on Tuesday, the day when the coalition partners met to sort out their differences on the major issues. Naek was not available for comment while PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar said that he was not in a position to offer any remark.
On Tuesday too, all was going well in the parleys between the PPP and the PML-N. In the late afternoon, a close aide of Asif Zardari contacted this correspondent to share the "good news" that issues had been settled and the two top leaders would address a joint press conference in 15 minutes. But it did not happen. Naek was not included in the PPP negotiating team for Tuesday's dialogue but was later summoned to the Zardari House. It was after his arrival at the Zardari House that the press conference that was eagerly awaited was put off.
Naek, a close confidante of the PPP co-chairman, remained controversial ever since the signing of the Murree Declaration on March 9, 2008. While Zardari rarely spoke on the issue, it was Naek, who had been creating confusion on the issue of the judges' restoration and ultimately came up with an extremely contentious constitutional package, which was linked to the restoration of the deposed judges just contrary to what was committed in the Murree Declaration.
The law minister, who has never been considered a constitutional expert, later came up with the latest offer to the deposed judges to take fresh oath and get back their lost positions without compromising their original seniority of Nov 2, 2008. As against the law minister's innovative solutions, legal and constitutional experts generally agree that through reappointment, the deposed judges could not regain their original seniority under the Constitution.
Interestingly, at a time when the PPP has engaged its coalition partners in the Zardari House to impeach the president, the PPP government's Attorney General Justice Malik Qayyum was reportedly meeting Musharraf in the Presidency. Qayyum, who was considered one of the authors of the Nov 3 unconstitutional steps of President Musharraf, has, however, been allowed to continue by the Gilani government, whose strings are pulled by the Zardari House.
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