Political

It’s ‘it’

Humayun Gauhar

When I heard the verdict against the prime minister in the contempt of court case, Akbar Allahabadi’s verse came to mind:

Muzzakar kay liyay ‘he’ hai, mouannas kay liyay ‘she’ hai;

Magar Hazrat mukhannas hain, na heeon mein na sheon main.

It’s a parody on the English words ‘he’ and ‘she’, while ‘mukhannas’ refers to eunuchs.

For male it is ‘he’, for females ‘she’;

But esquire is sexless, neither in the ‘hees’ nor the ‘shes’

The verdict is neither he nor she. It’s ‘it’. Prime Minister Yusuf Reza Gillani was convicted, but his punishment was detention in court till the judges choose to ‘rise’. It lasted 39 seconds. Having given their short order, the judges collected their wigs and gowns, rose and left, leaving the defence counsel speechless, to have his say later in a press conference. We are moving towards trial in media rather than by media.

What can I say? Why didn’t the judges go the whole hog, sentence the prime minister to six months and say that as a convict he is no longer eligible to be a member of parliament and thus no longer prime minister? It would have been clear and we would have gone on with our wretched existence. Instead, our confusion has been further compounded. If the judges just wanted to make a token example of the high and mighty by showing them that they are not above the law, they only made our uncertainty more uncertain. If they sidestepped the issue of eligibility and threw the ball into parliament’s court, then we are in for the long haul and much errant nonsense. Perhaps the bench divided, resulting in something for everyone – punish the prime minister without really punishing him.

The contempt case was a sideshow. The real show is to get President Zardari thorough the Swiss courts and make him return the $60 million that he and his wife stole from the people. Not a bad thought, but why depend on a foreign court? Why not order the Lahore High Court to start the retrial of the case that the Supreme Court had asked it to years ago? That court had found Zardari and Benazir guilty of corruption, but because of a taped telephone conversation between a judge adjudicating the case and a government official, it was rightly declared a mistrial by the Supreme Court, which asked the High Court for a retrial. It didn’t throw the judgment out. Why has that been hanging fire for years? Why throw the ball into the Swiss court instead?

The prime minister’s refusal to write a letter to the Swiss authorities to reopen corruption cases against President Asif Zardari despite repeated orders by the Supreme Court over two years led to the contempt. Gillani’s reasoning is not without merit: the president has immunity under the constitution while in office. By writing the letter he would be violating his constitutional oath to preserve and protect the constitution by violating its Article about immunity. Those opposed to the PM’s contention dug up history: two of Islam’s greatest caliphs had presented themselves before a court. They forget that it was a court of their own state, not a foreign court of a non-Muslim country. Those great caliphs would never have countenanced going to a foreign court nor been sent there by their own court. Forgotten is something more important: the concept of immunity does not exist in Islam. To provide constitutional immunity to certain state office holders in an Islamic republic is a violation of the Faith. What is needed is an amendment of the constitution, instead of tying ourselves into knots.

The net result is that convicted prime minister or not, new prime minister out of this National Assembly or not, the letter will not get written so long as there is a People’s Party led government headed by a People’s Party prime minister. Q.E.D.

Our confusion gets further compounded while urgent cases remain pending and Pakistan hurtles into incremental chaos. This is what happens when a country is being led in every branch and at every level by hollow men, more interested in creating optics, enhancing their importance and expanding their jurisdictions than in solving the people’s basic problem of abject deprivation. Such people are themselves mukhannas ‘its’.

It would be unfair to write about the verdict until one has read the full judgment. But the question cries out: why did the Supreme Court reserve judgment in the first place? One would have thought that they did because they wanted to deliberate before arriving at a conclusion and release the full judgment the same day as the verdict was handed down. After all, this is not a case of Gangu Taili committing contempt. It is the Prime Minister of Pakistan for God’s sake. Not good for the country or the democratic process that is evolving in fits and starts and which all today’s protagonists made such a big deal of in President Musharraf’s time. We are told that the judgment was delivered to the Speaker of the National Assembly that elects the prime minister and to the Election Commission last Friday, but I haven’t seen it yet.

How can the prime minister be removed?

He can be persuaded to resign by the president or his party for the greater good to avoid a tamasha. No surprise that many in the People’s Party are preening their feathers for the job, but only the one who pleases the president will wear this crown of thorns.

Being an ex-convict, does he attract the article in the constitution pertaining to ineligibility? The Election Commission can determine this but only if the Speaker of the National Assembly refers the matter to it. The Speaker can only do so if parliament asks her to. And then she can take a month to decide.

He loses a no-confidence vote, which is up to the opposition that doesn’t have the numbers.

What are the prime ministers options? He can buy time, but only for a time. It seems difficult how he will get out of this one for long. He has made a defiant speech in the National Assembly saying that he will not leave office unless the Speaker asks him to. He can buy time by:

Going into an intra-court appeal, which means to another bench in the Supreme Court comprising other judges. It is unlikely that another bench will embarrass its brother bench even if the prime minister’s appeal has merit. But the PM could buy a lot of time in so doing.

He asks the National Assembly for a vote of confidence which he will get.

He calls elections; the People’s Party plays victim-victim at which it is champion, and wins. However, that doesn’t get rid of his conviction so whether Gillani can contest or not is moot.

He gets super defiant and asks parliament to ratify his Executive Order restoring the sacked judges. Parliament refuses to do so and the judges are out again. That would mean war, serious war, between the three branches of government.

The National Assembly, representing the will of the people, elects the prime minister and only the National Assembly can throw him out. Parliament is the only institution higher than the Supreme Court and that is where the PM can and should go. It is about time parliament stamped its authority on the state instead of being a rubber stamp. It would make for a head-on-clash between the legislature and the judiciary but it’s also about time that we clearly demarcate the boundaries of the jurisdictions of the three branches government. It’s not the Durand Line. Let’s determine who runs the country, the executive, the legislature or the judiciary or all three together within their strictly demarcated domains. Just when the country needs stability most, the three branches of government are busy destabilizing it like Mafiosi in turf battles. But they’re not Mafiosi, they’re institutions that some ignoramuses call ‘pillars of the state’, forgetting that an Islamic state has only two pillars, God and the people, His vicegerent.

They should realize that they’re preparing the ground for yet another extra-constitutional intervention that people will welcome. But this time it may not be led by a four-star general.

humayun.gauhar786@gmail.com

Peace the only option

Humayun Gauhar

Anyone that thinks that war is an option has got to be a nut. Anyone that thinks that war between nuclear- armed countries is an option should be committed. Nuclear weapons are there to stop wars from happening, not to start them. By that measure Israel’s Netanyahu should be in the nut house.

Peace is the only option, peace that is acceptable to all sides. That is honourable. Else it is not peace at all, only an illusion of it. India and Pakistan are champion illusionists, but illusionists would know better anyone that illusions evaporate very fast.

Pakistanis are a very optimistic people, a most endearing, quality and a very big strength. Any India-Pakistan summit and we feel that peace is at hand. Most laudable, for it underlines not only that we are an optimistic but also fundamentally a peace loving people who want to get on with their lives. Which makes our lack of peace at home ironic, but that is another subject. When our Zardari recently broke bread with their Manmohan Singh in Delhi, we went through naive excitement for the umpteenth time. If you really want peace certain realities have to be borne in mind.

India’s state terrorism particularly in Kashmir begets and reinforces freedom struggles what it calls non-state terrorism. Blaming Pakistan deflects attention from its state terrorism. Sure Pakistan gives it succor as any adversary would, like India did the ‘Mukti Baheni’. But it was our own state terrorism and iniquity against the Bengalis that caused it. India took advantage, as any adversary would.

If Pakistan were to ignore Kashmir the struggle might lose some of its teeth, but only for a while, for soon it will grow new ones. The Kashmir revolt is a creation of Indian intransigence that Pakistan takes advantage of. I have always said: state terrorism begets non-state terrorism. Non-state terrorism will remain no matter how many treaties you sign while brushing cores issues under a carpet dyed in human blood and woven with the weak threads of bilateral trade, film productions and cricket matches. As long as state terrorism persists non-state terrorism will continue. Period. I cannot understand why the world cannot comprehend such a self-evident truth.

India is a large country with a small country mentality whereas Pakistan is a relatively small country with a big country mentality. Ours comes from the millennium-long Muslim rule over India. Conversely, India’s comes from being ruled by Muslims for over a millennium. I don’t know how much currency this theory has, but both countries should have disabused themselves of such complexes by now. India, I feel, is beginning to get out of this mindset with its economic upswing, but it will not be totally eradicated until the next generations in both countries take the helm for they are less burdened by stories of slavery and Partition. Land and population sizes don’t matter, the human condition does. That the majority of our peoples live in abject poverty makes us puny. By that measure – and it is the only relevant measure – Singapore is a much bigger country than either India or Pakistan. Its real resource is the high quality of its leadership and its greater human capital development. By these measures, India and Pakistan are pathetic.

Strong and wise rulers on both sides can bring detente. Neither Zardari nor Manmohan can be accused of either strength or wisdom. Cleverness: yes. Strength: hardly. Wisdom: a big fat no. Only strong and wise leaders can ‘sell’ an inevitably compromise-laden agreement to their peoples without their patriotism being questioned, their opponents making capital out of it and a ratings-hungry media taking jibes at them.

The great anomaly is where real power lies in both countries. It should with the chief executive who is the head of state and prime minister. But both countries are dynasty ridden. So in Pakistan it lies with the constitutionally ceremonial president because he is also co-chairman of the ruling party by virtue of being Benazir Bhutto’s widower. That is where his power comes from. In India, an Italian catholic lady is leader of the ruling party only because she is Rajiv Gandhi’s widow. That is where her power comes from.

Manmohan Singh is a weak, proxy prime minister as is Pakistan’s Yusuf Reza Gillani. Singh belongs to the small Sikh minority and is keenly aware that he has to go the extra mile to ‘prove’ his patriotism in the backdrop of the Sikh rebellion for an independent state during the eighties, the storming of the Golden Temple and the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh body guards. Gillani is in office at Zardari’s pleasure while he and his son are running from the courts.

Both countries face difficult elections soon, as does their great ‘ally’ America. America will have a determining say in any India-Pakistan deal. All decisions by these three countries now will be heavily informed by the need to get re-elected.

Without the military leaderships of both countries on board any expectation of a meaningful deal is a pipedream. While our army’s role in policy-making is well known, the Indian military’s role is camouflaged. Nothing new: the US military often plays a decisive role in foreign and defence policy. If it did not Iran would have been attacked by the Bush the Brat.

Should we forget the ‘core issue’, Kashmir and the UN resolutions asking for a plebiscite there? Or should we sort it out first. Or, should we put it on the backburner and normalize relations in other areas – which India calls ‘Confidence Building Measures’? Kashmir will not let us forget it as long as a freedom struggles rages there. And it will continue raging with or without our support. In fact, the Kashmiri freedom fighters could even turn on us for abandoning them. As long as the Kashmiri freedom struggles continues unresolved the sword of Damocles will keep hanging over our heads for it takes only one madman on either side to vapourize all of South Asia. Best to do all simultaneously – core issue, other delimitation issues and CBMs – what Musharraf and Vajpayee agreed to, a ‘Composite Dialogue’ and hope for the best. What is needed is simultaneous statesmanship and raw guts on both sides. Leave it to the functionaries and we will continue nitpicking for another six decades.

India and Pakistan should stop tussling over an America-free Afghanistan and arrive at a mutually acceptable understanding. Afghanistan may not want either of us anyway. As if killing ourselves over Kashmir isn’t enough, we cannot go killing ourselves over Afghanistan too.

Illogical demands should stop. Asking for Hafiz Saeed without furnishing adequate proof is illogical. America has to ship up or shape out of the India-Pakistan equation instead of being a fly in the ointment by placing a bounty on Saeed’s head one day and then changing it to a bounty for evidence two days later. If you don’t even have evidence what the hell are you doing placing a bounty on someone head? The only sense it makes is that you are trying to derail the normalization process.

America wants peace for its own reasons.

1.   It realizes that war between India and Pakistan is no longer an option. Another war between them could well mean another World War. The US and its traditional allies will suffer unacceptable multi-sectoral damage, regardless of what happens to India and Pakistan.

2.   It wants to an India free from ‘Pakistani sniping’ to focus on creating an economic and military bulwark against fast-growing Chinese economic and military might.

The conundrum is that while America says it wants India-Pakistan normalization, it doesn’t want them ganging up to form a South Asian Economic Association or some such, which has the seeds of becoming another giant. Worse, Pakistan’s presence could be instrumental in bringing China into the fold as India could Russia. Can you then imagine what a ‘monster’ the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation with the South Asian Economic Association could become? Soon energy-rich Iran and the Central Asian states would want to be part of the action.

They needn’t worry, though. America is so far ahead in the sciences – medicine, genetics, space, computer sciences and so much more – that it cannot lose its position of preeminence though it will certainly lose some of its monopoly. No bad thing for America either, for sharing over-lordship might bring it’s foreign and defence policies into the realm of civilization and rationality.

humayun.gauhar786@gmail.com

Falling Chairs

Humayun Gauhar

As President Zardari stood up clumsily to deliver his annual address to parliament his chair fell. His sage said it was a bad omen – “Beware the ides of March” and all that jazz – for ‘The Chair’ is akin to a throne, symbolizing power and office. “You will have to pray at the shrine of a Sufi much bigger than any we have in Pakistan,” the sage declared. So Zardari decided to go to the biggest South Asian Sufi of them all, Hazrat Moinuddin Chishti (1141-1230 CE), whose shrine is in city of Ajmer in India.

Many kings, presidents and prime ministers have gone to Ajmer Emperor Akbar is said to have gone to Ajmer to pray for a son. Some say it was to a Sufi in Sheikhupura, I forget his name, but that is another story. Either way, Akbar got a son and successor from his Hindu Rajput wife and the Mughal dynasty continued.

The official reason for Zardari’s visit was that he went to honour his late wife’s promise or ‘mannat’ to the pir, but the talk in the bazaars is that it was the ‘bad omen’ that triggered it off. It could have been both. Should it matter?

Yes it should, because the Pakistani state, ergo the people, must have paid for some part of the visit, even though it is said that the president paid for everything from his own pocket, including the one million US dollar offering he gave to the shrine. Fine, but the questions then arises: from where did he get so much money? Best to leave it to the judges of our highest exalted court – the ‘Supreme’ one that is – to take suo moto notice. I don’t know how Muslims can call any court ‘supreme’ and that too in an Islamic state since in Islam only the court of God is supreme because only God is supreme and sovereign. That’s yet another discussion. No one will object because our people, particularly of Sindh and southern Punjab, have a proclivity to go to Sufis dead or alive for blessings and intercession with the Almighty. That in Islam no one can intercede with God on anyone’s behalf is forgotten. And – you guessed it – that’s yet another discussion.

So off our president went with son, daughter, sage, ministers, sycophants, journalists, media and staff in tow, enough to require two aircraft, one executive jet (wonder which anointed ones got to sit in that one with the ‘royal’ family) and an army C-130, the type in which this ‘royal’ family’s nemesis General Zia ul Haq crashed and perished with many others. That particular aircraft, legend has it, was the same that transported Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s dead body half way to his ancestral graveyard in Sindh before returning to Rawalpindi halfway with engine trouble and the body had to be shifted to another C-130.  Not that it means anything; else the sage wouldn’t have kept quiet. By the way, such is our attraction for graves that Bhutto’s mausoleum has become another saintly shrine. Why do you think that some Muslims level them off every few years?

It was good that Zardari’s private visit included a ‘sumptuous’ semi-official lunch with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Not that a constitutionally ceremonial president and a weak proxy prime minister amount to much in this land of dynastic rule with the fig leaf of British parliamentary democracy. But it is precisely because of dynasty that Zardari wields real power, being Bhutto’s son-in-law and co-chairman of his party, with his young son the chairman and icon of the Bhutto cult, a symbolic figurehead so far. As for Mr. Singh, real power lies with the daughter-in-law of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty who is also the leader of the ruling party. No matter: jaw-jaw is better than war-war a la Churchill.

Be all that as it may, our media’s hysterical hoopla that accompanied the visit last Sunday was shameful. So obsessed was it with Zardari’s lunch and pilgrimage that it callously paid scant attention to the worst peacetime tragedy our army has ever faced when 135 of soldiers were buried alive in an avalanche in Siachen. The two oldest civilizations in the world have been at each other’s throats for 28 years in what is called the “highest war in the world”. Stupid. Both have lost more soldiers to the elements there than to bullets. It’s about geo-strategy and water. To get news about the Siachen tragedy we had to turn to foreign channels. Shows how wonky priorities can get when the collective mind is wonky: the difference between right and wrong, relevant and irrelevant or less relevant is lost.

Our media went overboard on the visit because we as a people are merrily unaware of where the limits of respect for state office end and the courtier’s pathological sycophancy begins; of where constructive criticism ends and national damage begins. There was daydreaming galore by anchors, clapped out ambassadors, bureaucrats gone to seed, generals put out to pasture, all masquerading as analysts, most in awe of America, many members of the Langley Club or on its waiting list.

That the Supreme Commander of our Armed Forces chose to go to India in the face of this enormous tragedy was of no consequence to him or to our media. Symbolism is an important balm for broken hearts and destroyed lives, more, dare I suggest, than the symbolism of a spiritual pilgramage. Would the great Sufi of Ajmer have missed Zardari’s presence? Would he have any use for the one million US dollars offering? Only his progeny would. Custody of shrines by progeny is a booming business because illiterate, desperately poor and helpless devotees can go there for, if nothing else, therapy of a soul in turmoil, even if they know that only God can answer prayers and that the piety that lay with the Sufi did not enter his genes to be passed on to his descendants. In Zardari’s mind – and he is our best political tactician, mind you – the symbolism of his pilgrimage to Ajmer would hold importance with Sindhi voters, what with elections looming.

Shrines often become political constituencies of Sufi progeny whose habits their exalted forebear would have looked at askance. Their graves are where the credibility and constituencies of ‘Mukhdooms’ or custodians lie. It’s as primitive and predatory as feudalism and tribalism since all three societal forms prey upon the illiteracy, poverty and helplessness of the hapless. Pathetic. Sufis are people of peace, of love, of poetry and sometimes of trance and dance, which is why the ascetic disapproves of them.

Only those who cannot see God with their inner eye, in their hearts and in His creations pray to mortals or ask them to intercede with Him. Human beings find it difficult to think in the abstract. Go to mausoleums, certainly, because very pious and God-loving people used to live there, but don’t imagine that they can do for you that which only God can do. Genuine Sufis and mystics were incredible people for they saw beyond logic and came to their deductions through feeling with the mind and thinking with the heart. But their followers and adherents don’t understand this and ascribe to them and their progeny qualities that only God has. Here I go drifting off into another subject.

Moinuddin Chishti is regarded as the greatest Sufi of the subcontinent for helping people, which is why is called ‘gharib nawaz’ or helper of the poor. The fire of the huge cauldron in which food is cooked and distributed free has been alight for centuries. It takes a ladder to get to its lip.

Back to the visit: Pakistan wants to be seen to be trying to improve relations with India, if for nothing else than to score brownie points with America. India has had the bad habit of linking disparate issues, particularly terrorism with everything. But now it seems that it is breaking that habit. India should remember that it is state terrorism that begets non-state terrorism. I will not say more. No point in laboring the obvious. America and India shouldn’t forget that no country in the world has suffered more at the hands of homegrown and foreign terrorism than Pakistan has and no country has lost more soldiers and civilians in fighting terrorists. Good luck. Peace is better than war.

humayun.gauhar786@gmail.com

Balance and Equity

Humayun Gauhar

With so much to say and such little space to say it in, best to KISS – ‘Keep It Simple Stupid’.

I know how bad this government is, but I don’t want it to go because I see none better to replace it, none that can realistically win elections. Best to let the system proceed. It’s as simple as that. I hate the British Westminster parliamentary system but I reluctantly accept it because it has national consensus. Thus I don’t want it to be made to collapse lest it destroys our country. It’s as simple as that. Put simply, our ruling elite’s priorities are all wonky because it is so alienated: while the country dies they worry about a memo and a letter. It’s essentially a power struggle within the elite that the people have nothing to do with.

The irony is that the one whom the National Reconciliation Ordinance didn’t benefit could be the fall guy. While the Supreme Court called the prime minister “dishonest” he raised his stature by first getting what amounted to a vote of confidence and then going to the Supreme Court. He won this round, but the fight continues. No one knows where it will end.

There are certain immutable cornerstones of justice.

1.    Respect for the constitution which divides power between three branches of government – parliament-legislature, executive and judiciary. It is a fine balance. Each must work in synchronicity, not conflict, by recognizing the limits of their domains. Independence has limits that end where the domains of others begin. Any transgression and balance is lost.

2.    Balance and equity must always be seen to exist.

3.    Justice must not only be done it also be seen to be done.

4.    Impartiality. Justice cannot be selective. It must be blind.

5.    Justice delayed is justice denied.

6.    Justice must be egalitarian. None is above the law, least of all judges. The law must apply equally to all.

7.    One cannot be a judge in one’s own cause.

The absence of any of these cornerstones means absence of justice.

To heal the wounds of our national psyche it is imperative that we remove all doubts and misgivings by discovering the truth behind all allegations and suspicions.

1.    Rescind the NRO, certainly, but balance and equity demand that everyone who got away under other devices must also be made answerable. Else justice will be selective.

2.    Rescind the Saudi deal that pardoned the Sharifs and hear all the cases against them. Would anyone innocent accept a pardon? Anyone innocent would consider accepting a pardon an insult and insist on clearing his name.

3.    Rescind the general pardon for Dr. A. Q. Khan and find out whether he really sold national secrets or not and who else was involved, if any. Would anyone innocent accept a pardon? Anyone innocent would consider it an insult and insist on clearing his name.

4.    Being a judge in one’s own cause is inequitable and unbalanced. Thus equity and balance demand that parliament being the highest branch of government with the upper hand hears the charges leveled against the chief justice in the 2007 reference against him and not the Supreme Judicial Council since being judged by one’s peers is tantamount to judging in one’s own cause. It is most incumbent for judges to be seen to be without blemish, else how will people have confidence in their impartiality? The chief justice has always maintained that the charges against him were facetious, so he should have no compunction in proving it.

5.     Parliament must determine whether the Executive Order restoring the sacked judges is in line with the constitution. The cute argument that they were never sacked is just so much sophistry and slight of semantics.

6.    Justice delayed is justice denied. Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s case holding fire must be decided urgently. None of his letters to various chief justices was answered. The registrar refused to receive his hand-delivered letter. Where’s impartiality?

7.    Equity and balance means that something cannot be legal at one time or in one set of circumstances and illegal at another time and another set of circumstances. What is wrong is wrong and what is right is right. Thus Provisional Constitutional Orders caused by deviations from the constitution can either be legal or illegal, not both. Changing times and circumstances have nothing to do with it. The doubt in many minds is: was the PCO of 2000 made legal because it enabled a certain set of judges to remain in office and the 2007 PCO made illegal because some of the same judges lost their jobs because of it and another set benefitted? Is this balanced and equitable? Is it just? The ‘upholding a principle’ argument becomes flippant and inane when applied when convenient and not when inconvenient. Now wait for them to say: one learns!

8.      The Charter of Democracy is an unusual document untypical of Pakistan’s warring politicians. Not adhering to it is typical. As the COD requires, no judge who has ever supported any deviation from the constitution and taken oath under any PCO should ever again hold the office of judge at any level.

Only when all these cornerstones are met and all doubts and suspicions removed will the judiciary be seen to be impartial and pristine. If you don’t have it in you to do all this, forget everything and declare them ‘past and closed transactions’ which the judiciary has been known to do.

The question is: since the prime minister has taken oath under the constitution to uphold the constitution, how can he write a letter to the Swiss authorities to reopen the cases against the president when the constitution gives him immunity? Wouldn’t that be tantamount to violating his oath by violating a constitutional Act? Can Supreme Court judges who have also taken oaths under the constitution and are sworn to uphold it insist that the prime minister causes such a letter to be written? Isn’t that tantamount to insisting that he violates the constitution? Isn’t such insistence itself a violation of the constitution? All this kafuffle considering the concept of immunity doesn’t exist in Islam. Aren’t we supposed to be an ‘Islamic Republic’? And to say that immunity didn’t apply to Musharraf because he was an ‘illegal’ president while it does to Zardari because he is ‘legal’ is to forget that the Supreme Court that included the current chief justice legitimized Musharraf’s takeover and took and gave oaths under the PCO of 2000. When you try to be too cute you look clownish.

The concept of self-notice or suo moto becomes questionable when undertaken at will without a process to decide where self-notice is justified and where not. Is it impartial, equitable, balanced and just that while hundreds of lawyers who are officers of the court contemn the judiciary by showering flower petals on a self-confessed murderer are ignored, the Supreme Court finds time to take self-notice of Atiqa Odho’s bottles while the hunger and incremental degradation of teeming millions goes unnoticed? Surely it couldn’t possibly be because she is beautiful, could it? Could it be because she is in General Musharraf’s party and he is the real target? Kidhar hain nigahain, kidhar hai nishana – ‘Where is the target, where the aim’.

Oh! Before I forget, do read the article ‘Absolut Justice’ by Amir Zia in the January 2012 edition of Newsline: www.newslinemagazine.com. Drunks should raise a toast to it, especially in the legal fraternity.

humayun.gauhar786@gmail.com

Cat in the Bag

by      Humayun Gauhar

Overdose of speculation lead to ‘Great Expectations’ the last maddening week. With uncertainty and speculation rife, theories became ever more bizarre. Then suddenly we got a glimpse of a funny looking cat that has been spoiling to come out of the bag – it’s wearing a judicial wig and an army uniform for God’s sake, not the usual army cap and judicial gown. That’s all that was left to make our mockery complete.

Newspapers tell us that a corps commanders meeting last Thursday decided that the army “would not intervene politically…[but]…if the apex court sought the army’s help for getting its decisions implemented, the request could be considered.” It means that we could be facing a judicial coup backed by the army and not the usual army coup backed by the judiciary. But it will be a coup nevertheless.

A military-judiciary nexus has always been there in Pakistan as it has in much of Muslim history. The Supreme Court has dutifully legitimized every military intervention. This ‘age of madness’ though calls for absurd measures. This time judicial intervention could come first and army intervention later. Legitimization will be pre-facto for a Supreme Court order will be considered legitimization, like “a revolution is its own justification”.

Why the desire to throw out the government so fast? It’s the ‘Ides of March’ syndrome. The month sees the retirement of the ISI chief, Senate elections, and, most importantly, the Swiss case against Zardari gets time-barred if the letter that the Supreme Court wants the executive to write to the Swiss authorities to reopen isn’t sent before March: thus the desire to send the executive packing fast and the executive’s desire for March to pass fast.

It is not the business of the army or judiciary to intervene under any pretext or throw out governments, form interim governments or force elections. All must go by the Constitution. So before we start chattering we should familiarize ourselves with Article 190 of the Constitution under which the Supreme Court could ask the army for ‘aid’. It says, without elaboration or explanation, “All executive and judicial authorities throughout Pakistan shall act in aid of the Supreme Court.” That’s it. It doesn’t say what kind of aid and for what. The army is part of the executive yet it could be required by the Supreme Court to act against the executive, which is like asking it to act against itself – illogicality in the extreme. How can the army enforce an order of the Supreme Court forcing the executive to do something without intervening if it doesn’t? Once the Supreme Court, fearing a physical attack on it by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s goons, asked for the army’s ‘aid’. The army didn’t comply. Sharif’s goons attacked and left a big smirch on our benighted history.

I would be all for early elections or even intervention if I was convinced that those waiting in the wings – political, military, judicial or even brazen US stooges – had credible solutions to our problems and realistic implementation strategies. None do. Military governments make good starts but give up to politicians because they try to become democrats. Political governments don’t even make good starts but their desire to become dictators combined with non-delivery, non-governance, nepotism and corruption enables coups. Imagining that the judges have solutions has to be the biggest joke. The only solution is the obvious: let the process continue, let this parliament complete its term (unless the prime minister dissolves it), evolve, learn and hope that things will improve. Only the people can change a government, not an army or a Supreme Court.

Fools are those that engender feverish speculation with hysterical statements and those that don’t look at the bigger picture and the greater good. They forget that no matter what, nothing should be done that aborts the process and destabilizes an already unstable country. They should also realize that times have changed and the world has no stomach for departures from the constitution, no matter what the excuse. Fools are those that don’t realize that much of what is happening in Pakistan is part of a greater global game and they shouldn’t become unwitting pawns in it. Problem is the enemy within: so many witting pawns who don’t work for our good.

The prime minister tells the Senate that if he goes they will all go too and we will not see another election in our lifetimes. Can you blame people for thinking that his government is on the brink? Then he tells the National Assembly that he will not tolerate a “state within a state”, an obvious reference to the army. The army is under him and it’s his fault if he can’t control it. He shouldn’t bleat publicly like one of Mary’s lost lambs, raising the already high temperature. Next he says in an interview to a Chinese newspaper that the army and ISI chiefs have violated the constitution. That’s a serious charge indeed, for it borders on treason.

So fragile is the country that it goes into a spin over an article in a foreign newspaper by one Mansur Ijaz, an odious publicity-seeking Pakistani-American with dubious credibility. It then goes into reverse spin when a retired US general gives a somewhat contrary statement. It betrays a country at war with itself. The reason for this hysteria is the allegation by Ijaz that he delivered a memo written at the behest of our former ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani through a retired US general to the former US Chairman JCSC asking for help against a possible coup in return for bringing the army and the nuclear programme to heel. If true, could it be the president that is the mastermind? If true, it also borders on treason and puts the president at the mercy of Haqqani: will he say that the memo is only a figment of Ijaz’s imagination, or that it was his own brainchild, or that the president asked him to? One noose, two necks. Will he save his own neck or will he put it around “the boss’s” neck? The whole thing will stand or fall on the testimony of Ijaz and his Blackberry. Safest place to keep Haqqani is either the president’s or prime minister’s house. Any wonder that they are hysterical and are trying everything to prevent the Supreme Court from proceeding.

Is it political bipolarity or is there a method to the prime minister’s seeming madness? Conventional wisdom has it that he is convinced that since he or his government are nearing an untimely demise, best to go as political martyrs rather than failures to ensure life after political death. Thus he is goading the army into taking over. The clever generals are hiding behind the cloaks of the judges. And Don Quixote is tilting full speed ahead. What a country.

What say you of the born-again democrat Nawaz Sharif who chose to move the Supreme Court knowing that a higher body, a parliamentary committee, would conduct an inquiry into the memo affair? How can you have two inquiries on the same issue? Whose findings would prevail? Obviously of the higher body, but not necessarily in Pakistan because Sharif will call the parliamentary committee’s report suspect since the opposition is a minority.

What say you of a Supreme Court that admits Sharif’s petition for hearing instead of waiting for the report of the higher body? How can there be parallel inquiries? And they go and form a commission to investigate it. What if their commission’s report is different from the parliamentary committee’s report? Would the Supreme Court ride roughshod over it? Best solution: no parliament, no parliamentary committee, no report. All are naked in these public baths.

humayun.gauhar786@gmail.com

What Will Win the American Presidency?

Lies? More Lies?

I may not be an expert in American Politics, and I may not even know the constitution well, nor would I know what constituencies that matter in the US of A, but what i can tell you is that it is the most important event in the whole world.

The President of the USA is the most powerful man in the world. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely may be something you may have heard.

What is said during the campaign is as important as it gets, sometimes it is also what dirt one manages to dig up on the past. Public opinion matters in America, and the media plays the vital role in framing the mindset of individuals and groups in the political framework.

Campaign managers are hired to feed news to the media, consequently to the public. It is the smartness of words and thoughts which will land the man in the White House.

Once upon a time it was Iraq and it’s weapons of mass destruction, now maybe Iran. Iraq never created 9/11 but then trillions of US dollars were spent on a war in the region.

How many people died in 9/11, and then how many people were killed in the decade following the attacks? Somehow the numbers do not add up. They never are supposed to add up.

Afghanistan is another example of what is said, and what is to be believed. Sure Osama Bin Laden was SAID to have his strong hold in the country. If we are to believe that, which we should of course and no doubt. But then someone explain to me, that the Number 1 cause of concern for a few decades had been opium.

The war against drug was enemy number 1. How come since the US occupation in Afghanistan has led to the growth in production of opium. Not only has it increased it is well worth over a few Trillion Dollars. So what are the troops in Afghanistan doing, killing ducks? What to talk of what Karzai, a pro US leader doing in this regards? The truth is that drugs is not a problem in the USA any longer. There are no drugs in America any more are there? The nightclubs are clean of this social evil. Who even cares to talk about this. Drugs is not a problem for the US of late, since Vietnam is long past us.

I was speaking to a few soilders and families who had lost their loved ones, the surprising thing was that men in uniform do not ask questions. They take orders. Some of these men were beginning to question why they had been away from home for so long. The families were once proud that their loved ones had lost their lives for the sake of their country. Now, its not like that anymore.

The public in America likes to be scared, or do they? They were once a nation who led from the front. Who could produce, who could serve and be leaders. Today, had Europe not taken the headlines, the USA was deeply shamed in context to their pathetic performance in economic terms. They are bankrupt. The US has an external debt of over 14 Trillion Dollars. I just want to mention that it takes a normal shift working 8am to 5 pm 5 days a week, approximately 72 years to print a million Dollars. Now that takes some doing. So what is being done about it, borrowing a few trillion more.

Is America creating more jobs, is that even a bother. You don’t bother when you know you cannot fix something. Somethings just go beyond repairs, and your only concern is that it should not happen on your clock.

The choices Americans have are very simple. You can either let it happen on his clock or the next president’s. The unfortunate point is that it will be the public who will face the pain. The Americans must now stand up and ask for their rights from their Government. They must ask to be told the truth, to be shown the mirror. Mere speeches telling you the numbers are meaningless.

The people who are losing their homes, those who have nothing to eat, those losing their jobs and their sanity cannot be forced to listen to the media managers running presidentail campaigns.

What happened, with people who took to the streets on Occupy Wall Street Movement, how much was that covered? What was however covered, were the happenings on the streets in the Arab world and the revolutions taking place there. Was it not the US stance to keep these corrupt leaders heads of state? It suited them for decades, so why this eyewash? The same thing was happening in America in their own backyard. In New York City, Wall Street.

What they tell you is important is usually not, what you feel is wrong is what needs to be addressed. What problems you face as a citizen is what needs to be fixed. Neither did Saddam bother you nor is Irans president taking ordinary American peoples jobs.

The time has come for politics to be less marketing and drama, and more reality and honesty. Lets hope that the presidential election will be based on truths and values of humans rather than the adventurism of a few who want to rule absolutely.

God Bless America

The Tiger Roars

When Imran Khan lost the 1997 elections, I wrote: ‘The Tiger Will Roar’. When he was arrested I wrote, ‘Tiger Caged’. Now, after 15 years roaming the political wilderness, the caged tiger is unleashed, roaring before a sea of disaffected city dwellers excited by the emerging ‘I-Factor’ – ‘I’ for Imran, not ‘me’. Better than the Lucky Irani Circus we have suffered forever, for he claims not to be part of it. The tiger’s prey better watch it. Or should they? This tiger has his own act. Or does he? The tiger should watch it too.

Unlike the lion, which lives in a pride, the tiger is a loner. So it is with Imran. When a loner tries to form a pack he is being unnatural. A tiger cannot change his stripes. This is where Imran should be careful. No lion would ever accept a weak or compromised animal in his pride leave alone a gaggle of chameleons. Any undesirable offspring or member is either expelled or killed. Those that Imran is out to fight are very savvy, very sly. A leopard may not be able to change his spots nor a tiger his stripes, but chameleons can change colour at will to blend in with new environments. The day before yesterday they were religiosity personified, yesterday morning centrist ‘nationalists’, last night pseudo socialists and today the tiger’s ‘revolutionaries’. They swivel like weathercocks with each passing gust and revolve like mad in a tsunami. Bereft of ideology, they prevent tsunamis because their purpose is to protect the iniquitous status that benefits them – unless they become beneficiaries of the tsunami too. Coldblooded animals, chameleons seek not cold tsunamis but the rising sun to warm themselves.

It’s not going to be easy. Young Imran talks revolution when actually he’s talking absolutism – “My way or the highway”. Revolution cannot happen by coopting the targets of revolution. A cancer cannot cure itself, nor can tablets and drips when surgery is needed. If Imran seeks medication from those that have infected the country, the infection will multiply.

Similarly, you don’t overthrow a system by becoming part of the system. Before you know it, the system will pollute you. Try growing a rose in a gutter and soil your clothes. Revolution comes with relativism, proportionality, else its anarchy. Anarchy may topple an iniquitous status quo but not necessarily replace it with an equitable one. By sleeping with the enemy you don’t necessarily produce a normal offspring.

Imran entered politics to fight the corruption of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. So disgusted was he that when Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto came to his hospital after a blast he refused to receive her. Came the day when he was photographed with both ‘great’ leaders in self-exile: he was slowly becoming part of the system without realizing it. The idealist was becoming a realist, and I use the word ‘realist’ pejoratively. Revolutions are made by actions, not words. Rhetoric is no substitute for action. The gap between profession and action must be very narrow. One has to be a pragmatic, no-nonsense idealist, practical without losing purpose.

While realism and pragmatism are tactically necessary, they can silently become copout. Our Prophet (pbuh) was an idealist to beat all idealists and a realist to beat all realists. So was Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Without idealists history would be static and truly end. Its course wouldn’t change nor new faiths and ideologies be launched, liberation won, states created. But idealism alone is not enough; there must be fire in the belly too. Those with both are makers of history. Without the fire they become dreamers.

Imran has enough fire in his belly to run a nuclear power plant. He demonstrated that with stunning success in cricket and by establishing his hospital, both against tremendous odds. Sheer tenacity got him there. How many people don’t I know who had great natural talent but achieved proportionately little because of lack of fire in the belly, like black roses with huge buds that hold great promise but never blossom?

People were glad to see those diehards who had stood by Imran through thick and thin next to him on the stage in Lahore. In Karachi they were sad to see chameleons alongside Imran while the diehards played second fiddle. Worse, they had to suffer their same insufferable harangues that they have suffered for years. “I’ve seen a new beam of light in Imran” – is the typical chameleon ‘justification’ when colour changes. How many ‘beams of light’ are they going to see in their lives? What happened to those previous beams? Did they mistake them for the light from oncoming runaway trains hurtling towards us in that tunnel that has no light at its end? Champions at skipping out of the way and clambering aboard the next beam, chameleons leave the people to be run over by the runaway trains of runaway corruption, nepotism and ineptness. Imran needs to clear away the mist of euphoria lest his new pet chameleons eat him.

A man is judged not by his actions alone. He is also judged the company he keeps – you know, “birds of a feather” and all that jazz. Imran’s stock would have risen a thousand-fold if he had politely but publicly told the chameleons, “Thanks, but no thanks” for you are the products and protectors of the status quo that I have come to change. If stay in the system he must and bring revolution from within – which will be a first in history – then he must raise his stature so high that neither sticks nor stones can reach him and he doesn’t need chameleons to win elections. His message should be so clear and compelling that that it fires the imagination of the people and it matters little who he puts up for election. In 1946 Mr. Jinnah put up ‘lampposts’ and won. In 1970 Bhutto’s lampposts defeated many a chameleon in Punjab and Sindh and Mujib’s in East Pakistan. To reach that level Imran’s grasp must be beyond his reach, else what were the stars made for? Wish lists are neither vision nor plan. They are just dreams. We do not need to know what. We need to know how.

There is no doubting Imran’s tunnel vision and resolve. He has always been a slow starter but with sheer grit and determination has reached the top. But in politics the way to the top is a long and slippery slope with many paths. Take the wrong path and lose the sheen from your shine.

Acquiring or sharing power is not difficult. It is delivery that matters and democracy is delivery. The best strategy for Imran would be to stay with principles. If he breaks them for the sake of tactics, then before he realizes it tactics will become strategy. Jihad means struggle and no jihad remains a jihad by breaking or compromising with principles. Therein lies Imran’s greatest enemy – the enemy within. Crowds can easily be disappointed and evaporate faster than they form – like pigeons that fly away together when frightened but return one by one.

Some chameleons may seem very nice and decent; it is the status quo that they are products of and represent which is the problem. By taking into the party chameleons that symbolize the iniquitous status quo is to frighten the pigeons away by letting wolves into their coop. The excuse that chameleons may not be awarded election tickets is so much balderdash. Who buys that?

humayun.gauhar786@gmail.com