ISLAMABAD - The Pakistan Supreme Court's
decision to begin contempt proceedings against
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani over his failure
to reopen corruption investigations into President
Asif Ali Zardari, appears to be in step with
attempts by the all-powerful and equally
aggressive military and intelligence establishment
to drive out the Pakistan People's Party (PPP)-led
government.
By demanding that Gilani
explain himself later this week, Pakistan's
highest court on Monday night fanned the turmoil
gripping Pakistan, even as
the danger of a blatant military coup has faded
following a one-on-one meeting between Zardari and
army chief General Ashfaq Kiani.
Gilani,
who could be forced from office if convicted,
faces the combined might of an increasingly
sure-footed judiciary and a defiant military
leadership that keeps trying to assert power over
a civilian government that faces Senate elections
in March and which the PPP is expected to win.
During a compelling performance before
parliament on Monday night, Gilani said he would
appear before the court. "We have always respected
the courts. The court has called me and in respect
to the court, I will go on January 19 and appear."
in a televised speech, Gilani said, "The army and
the judiciary, they both have to protect democracy
in Pakistan. They can't remove democracy. They
can't pack up the system."
There are clear
indications to suggest that the military
establishment is trying to dislodge the Zardari
government with the help of the Supreme Court,
whose defiant Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad
Chaudhry has an obvious soft spot for opposition
leader and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif as a
prime minister-in-waiting and owes his current
position to Sharif, whose 2009 anti-government
march had played a key role in his restoration
after he had been sacked by the administration of
Pervez Musharraf.
The court has demanded
the government ask Swiss authorities to reopen
corruption cases against the president that date
back to the 1990s. The government has refused to
write a letter to the Swiss to reopen
investigations into allegations of Swiss bank
accounts held by Zardari, maintaining that he
enjoys presidential immunity.
Taking
strong exception to the government's reluctance,
the January 16 apex court order said that tough
action could be taken against those responsible -
irrespective of their office or official authority
- for not implementing a 12-page order last week
that read like a damning indictment of the
government in defying the Supreme Court's verdict
in various cases, especially one relating to the
National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO).
The NRO was a controversial presidential
ordinance issued by Musharraf in October 2007 to
grant general amnesty to politicians, political
workers and bureaucrats accused of corruption,
embezzlement, money laundering, murder and
terrorism between January 1, 1986, and October 12,
1999. That was the time between two states of
martial law in Pakistan and the NRO was aimed at
promoting national reconciliation and removing
vestiges of political vendetta and victimization.
The court order lays out six options
before the government, including one in which the
president, prime minister and the law minister
could all be disqualified from holding public
office if they persist in refusing to implement
the NRO verdict, which required among other things
that the federal government write to a court in
Switzerland and reopen cases of alleged corruption
against Zardari.
The order noted that the
president and the prime minister seemed to be
loyal not to the state but to a political party.
While Zardari and the government have indicated
that the president is provided immunity under the
constitution, Chaudhry has responded that the
president must make that claim before the apex
court.
The charge-sheeting of Zardari and
Gilani, warning them against a possible
disqualification if they do not implement the apex
court's orders for reopening corruption cases,
amounts to a judicial coup against the government
at a time when the powerful military establishment
and frail civilian leadership stand
eyeball-to-eyeball in the Supreme Court, which is
hearing the infamous "Memogate" scandal despite
objections raised by the government that the apex
court should not have taken up the case when
parliament was already investigating the matter.
Memogate revolves around an alleged
memorandum addressed to former US army chief
Admiral Michael Mullen and seeking Washington's
help to ward off a possible military coup in the
wake of the May 2 killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama
bin Laden in a covert US Navy Seals raid inside
Pakistan.
American-Pakistani businessman
Mansoor Ijaz alleged that the former Pakistani
ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani had
asked him to deliver the confidential memo,
seeking US assistance against the aggressive
designs of the Pakistan army. Mansoor further
claimed that the memo was drafted by Haqqani at
the behest of Zardari and delivered to Mullen
through former US national security adviser,
General James Jones, after the raid that killed
Bin Laden.
Kiani took up the issue with
Zardari, asking him to summon Haqqani back to
Pakistan and initiate an inquiry against him.
Haqqani finally resigned following a November 22
meeting of the civil-military top brass that
included the president, the prime minister and
army chief, as well as Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) head Ahmed Shuja Pasha and Haqqani himself.
The government subsequently referred Memogate to
the Parliamentary Committee of the National
Assembly on National Security for a thorough
inquiry.
The committee was created by
Gilani after the approval of a resolution in the
joint session of the two houses of the parliament
and with the consent of all the ruling and
opposition parties. Before the committee formally
opened, Sharif approached the Supreme Court,
alleging that the memo was approved by the
country's top political leadership and the court
should conduct an inquiry to fix responsibility.
In an unusual move, Sharif himself
presented his case by reading out the entire
petition in the apex court, seeking action under
Article 6 of the constitution against key
government personalities, in case the issuance of
the memo was established. A nine-judge larger
bench headed by Chaudhry subsequently ordered (on
December 1 and without much deliberation) the
setting up of a judicial commission to investigate
the authenticity of the memo.
The court
orders in the NRO case were issued after Gilani
last week told a Chinese newspaper, the People's
Daily Online, that the army chief and ISI chief
had not been given approval by the competent
authorities before submitting their responses with
the Supreme Court in the Memogate case and they
seemed to have acted unconstitutionally. The
responses were submitted with the apex court
through Defense Secretary Lieutenant General
(retired) Naeem Khalid Lodhi, who stated that the
government had no operational control over the
armed forces or the ISI.
It was under the
NRO that two twice-elected former prime ministers
- Benazir Bhutto and Sharif, who had been living
in exile - returned to Pakistan to take part in
the 2008 general elections that the
Musharraf-backed Muslim League eventually lost.
But after the installation of the coalition
government led by the PPP, the NRO was declared
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on December
16, 2009.
This threw the country into a
political crisis as the government was compelled
to reopen hundreds of corruption cases that had
been withdrawn - and the refusal of the government
to reopen investigations into the president,
maintaining he has presidential immunity under
Article 248 of the constitution.
Well-placed Law Ministry officials in
Islamabad are amazed at the court's decision to
also issue notice to the president on Sharif's
petition as they point out that under Article
248(2) of the constitution, no criminal
proceedings whatsoever can be instituted against
the president during his five-year term of office.
They point out that the only action that
could be taken against the president is under
Article 47 of the constitution that provides for
impeachment. But the president could only be
impeached by parliament in order to pave way for
initiating criminal proceedings against him.
The chief justice has already asked the
Pakistani attorney-general to submit the
president's reply on the Memogate scandal or the
court would be bound to believe that he had
confessed to his alleged involvement in the case.
What kicked up a storm was the complete
difference of views between the government's
response filed with the court and those of the
army and the ISI chiefs. While Kiani and Pasha not
only acknowledged the existence of the memo and
described it a threat to national security, the
government maintained that Sharif's petition,
seeking court intervention in a case that had
already been referred to a parliamentary
committee, should simply have been dismissed.
The media wing of the Pakistani military -
the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) -
subsequently issued a stern press release while
taking notice of Gilani's remarks against the army
and the ISI chiefs. "There can be no allegation
more serious than what the honorable prime
minister has leveled. This has very serious
ramifications with potentially grievous
consequences for the country," said the ISPR press
release while literally threatening the prime
minister.
That the ISPR statement
infuriated the prime minister was evident in the
immediate sacking of the defense secretary for
gross misconduct and acting illegally by filing
the responses of the army and ISI chiefs to the
apex court without getting clearance from the
Defense Ministry. Lodhi was considered close to
Kiani, being the most senior bureaucrat
responsible for military affairs, a post usually
seen as the military's main advocate in the
civilian bureaucracy.
It was against the
backdrop of these developments that Kiani finally
met Zardari on January 14 after an unusual gap of
two months and reportedly expressed displeasure
over remarks by Gilani over the memo petition in
the apex court. According to Reuters, "The army
chief complained to the president about the prime
minister's statements, and said they needed to be
either clarified or withdrawn." Presidential
spokesman Farhatullah Babar denied media reports
on the contents of the meeting.
Taking
stock of the current impasse among different state
institutions, the Daily Times stated in its
January 16 editorial:
That parliament is supreme as per
our constitution and the question of
civil-military imbalance needs to be addressed
is something no democracy-loving citizen would
deny. At the same time, it is no secret that the
military is the most powerful institution in the
country. This government has tried its best to
appease the military in many ways, especially
post-Abbottabad Osama raid when even the
opposition was railing against the military.
Democracy returned to Pakistan after nine years
of military rule in 2008. Ever since, moves have
been afoot to destabilize the democratically
elected government by hook or by crook. From
spreading negative information in the media
about the government to judicial activism, no
stone remained unturned in ousting this
government.
So far, the government is
sitting tight. Taking on two of the most
powerful institutions - the army and the
judiciary - takes some guts, which is what the
government is trying to do these days. It is
good to see the government taking parliament on
board in favor of democracy through a resolution
to this effect. What remains to be seen is
whether this pledge will translate into anything
meaningful given that the knives are out against
the government, be it in the opposition circles
or within the state institutions. Whatever the
outcome, the most affected would be the people
of Pakistan.
Having directly and
indirectly managed the country's affairs and
tasted political power for more than half the
period of its post-independence 60-year life, the
army has ceased to be apolitical. It is now taking
a watching brief as the courts take on the
government.
Amir Mir is a senior
Pakistani journalist and the author of several
books on the subject of militant Islam and
terrorism, the latest being The Bhutto murder
trail: From Waziristan to GHQ.
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