Did Zardari get the last laugh?

Tuesday, March 17, 2009 Zahid F Ebrahim There is much talk of an embattled and defeated man in the Presidency. The chief justice has been restored. The Zardari government has surrendered, it is claimed. So why has Zardari's smile gotten wider? As night fell on March 15, the long march was making history. The people of Pakistan refused to be cowed by lathis or unending tear gas. Senior police officials refused to obey orders from Salmaan Taseer's government to use deadly force against unarmed citizens. Every hurdle on the road to Islamabad was simply melting away in face of the Black Coats' revolution. However, on announcement of the restoration of Iftikhar Chaudhry as chief justice, the revolution has retreated. The Long March and dharna have been called off by lawyers and politicians. President Zardari's government is taking credit for fulfilling the promise of Benazir Bhutto. Prime Minister Gillani's announced on state television that Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry will be restored as chief justice on March 21, only after the retirement of the incumbent chief justice, Abdul Hameed Dogar. He reiterated that Mr Zardari had been unable to fulfil the promise of restoration because Abdul Hameed Dogar was already chief justice and that there could not be two chief justices. Prime Minister Gillani also committed that all other deposed judges will stand restored, but notably there was no mention of restoring the Nov 2, 2007, judiciary. In fact, Gillani clearly stated that the restoration of Iftikhar Chaudhry was fulfilment of President Zardari's pledge that the term of any existing judge will not be disturbed. Musharraf's abettor in the Nov 3 assault on the judiciary, Abdul Hameed Dogar, will get an honourable exit. The judges appointed by Musharraf after Nov 3 will continue in office. Those who took oath under the PCO, despite the clear Order of the Supreme Court on Nov 3, 2007, not to do so, will continue "undisturbed, " as will the recently appointed judges, loyalists with which President Zardari has packed the superior courts. Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Justice Ramday in the Supreme Court, Justice Sharif in the Lahore High Court and Justice Mushir Alam in the Sindh High Court, even if one includes those honourable judges who were deposed on Nov 3 and reinstated after repeating their oath under the Constitution, will be a minority in the superior courts of Pakistan and thus rendered ineffective. The illegal actions of Nov 3 will continue to be recognised as validated according to the decision of Abdul Hameed Dogar in the Tikka Mohammed Iqbal case. According to Senate chairman Farooq Naek, Article 270 AAA, the product of the signature of a dictator, stays. This is also the argument of Malik Muhammad Qayyum, the last attorney general, who claims that the illegal acts of Nov 3 continue to be protected by Article 270 AAA because it has been validated by the PCO Judiciary. Thus the guarantees given by President Zardari not to touch General Musharraf or his illegal actions of Nov 3 will remain undisturbed. The president's powers under the 17th Amendment will remain. The presidential form of government introduced by General Musharraf suits the present incumbent fine. Any move opposing it can be referred to the dustbin of high powered committees. Zardari's real political adversary, the PML-N may be the biggest loser. Duped thrice before, they have once again fallen for an impotent promise. They were on the road to vindication, but decided to make a u-turn. The two Sharifs will remain at the mercy of a decision in a review by the same PCO Bench which disqualified them. Even if the PML-N government is restored in Punjab, without Shahbaz Sharif, it will have a tough time coping with a belligerent Salmaan Taseer. Therefore, standing tall in the presidential palace on March 21 after hosting a farewell banquet for Abdul Hameed Dogar, President Zardari can confidently say that had the last laugh. The lawyers of Pakistan will be left in a position no better than Saadat Hasan Manto's Ustaad Mangu. "The constables took Ustad Mangu to the police station. On the way and at the police station, he kept yelling, The new constitution… the new constitution. But no one understood what he was referring to. What are you shouting about…what new laws and rights are you shouting about…the laws are the same old ones… And Ustad Mangu was locked up in a cell." (Saadat Hasan Manto, New Constitution) . The writer is an advocate of the Supreme Court. Email: zfebrahim@ gmail.com

The lion unleashed

Mar 16th 2009 | ISLAMABAD
From Economist.com

Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's opposition leader, scores a big victory

AFP

IF PAKISTAN’S president, Asif Zardari, had ever wondered who rules the roost in Punjab, the country’s most populous province, he found out on Sunday March 15th. As an angry crowd gathered outside the house—and temporary prison—of Nawaz Sharif, Mr Zardari’s great rival, the provincial police melted away.

With a roar of sports utility vehicles, Mr Sharif, the “lion of Punjab”, then swept forth to lead a protest march to Islamabad. “This is a prelude to a revolution,” he declared. Faced, at least, with a continuation of political unrest that had included a small riot that day in Lahore, Punjab’s capital, Mr Zardari proceeded to bow to his rival’s main demands.

In a televised speech broadcast early on Monday—even as Mr Sharif and his exuberant followers were travelling in convoy to Islamabad—Mr Zardari’s prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, promised to reinstate Pakistan’s deposed chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, on March 21st. Mr Zardari’s erstwhile refusal to reinstate the sacked judge, whose cause Mr Sharif has been championing, was the main reason for the collapse of a power-sharing agreement between the two men last year. Mr Gilani, who heads a coalition led by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), to which he belongs and which Mr Zardari leads, has also promised to undo constitutional changes made by Pervez Musharraf, the country’s former leader.,

In response to this climb-down, which Pakistan’s army and the envoys of America and Britain had been urging on Mr Zardari for several days, Mr Sharif declared that the protest rally, billed as a “long march” to Islamabad, was off. He then returned to his opulent hacienda outside Lahore, which contains two stuffed lions and much memorabilia from his two terms as prime minister during the 1990s. For Mr Zardari, who inherited the PPP from his murdered wife, Benazir Bhutto, this represents a serious embarrassment, for which he is mostly to blame.,

The failure of the coalition agreement was perhaps inevitable. Mr Zardari feared that Mr Chaudhry, an unpredictable judge, would undo all Mr Musharraf’s edicts—including an amnesty that he had received from corruption charges. For his part, Mr Sharif, who manipulated the judiciary with abandon during his periods in office, plainly hoped that a gratefully restored Mr Chaudhry would overturn Mr Musharraf’s ban on third-term prime ministers. Many considered that this dispute between Mr Zardari and Mr Sharif encapsulated the natural rivalry between their two parties. But Mr Zardari, Pakistan’s most powerful civilian president, went too far.,

At least partly at his behest, on February 25th the Supreme Court disqualified Mr Sharif and his brother, Shahbaz, Punjab’s chief minister, from holding public office. Mr Zardari then dismissed the province’s legislature and declared president’s rule in Punjab. Given that he—an ethnic Sindhi, like most of his coterie of advisers—is especially unpopular in Punjab, this was always likely to cause unrest. By throwing his weight behind the lawyers’ long-planned protest march on behalf of Mr Chaudhry, Mr Sharif was able to engineer a crisis.,

Hitherto Mr Zardari may have trusted to support from America, Britain and Pakistan’s army, who are all, to varying degrees, wary of the populist and conservative Mr Sharif. He can no longer do so—the Punjab police’s decision to free Mr Sharif from confinement was very likely in response to an army command. Indeed, this may be a positive development in the effort to rebuild Pakistan’s much-abused democracy: given quite how unpopular Mr Zardari, the accidental president of a country he is alleged to have looted, has swiftly become.,

Yet this latest pause in Pakistan’s political turmoil is likely to be brief. Reforming Pakistan’s constitution, in effect stripping Mr Zardari of many of the swollen presidential powers he inherited from Mr Musharraf, will be a messy business. More urgently, it is unclear what ruse Mr Zardari may now attempt to protect himself from the maverick Mr Chaudhry.,

Outside the deposed chief judge’s house in Islamabad on Monday a crowd of his admirers had gathered to celebrate. While inside their hero slept, one waved a placard that read: “We fought for justice and survived”. Another, a bearded Islamist, expressed his hope that Mr Chaudhry would swiftly pass a death sentence on Mr Musharraf. And a supporter of Mr Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) party predicted that Shahbaz Sharif would be reinstated in Punjab within a week—and Mr Sharif would be Pakistan’s prime minister within a year.