Judicial Revolution of Pakistan: Facts, Fantasy and Farce!

Xeno

Thief Shumila Rana

“It’s a victory of justice” these were the magical words that PML-N’s MP  Miss Shumaila Rana uttered outside the LHC . Miss Rana was accused of credit card theft and was caught in act of crime by the CCTV whose footage was shown on national TV. I guess those words really define our society today, it is victory for someone but the question is , can it be called a victory for Justice?

Can present judiciary make unbiased decisions especially in the cases of  those who supported the cause of old PCO judges [these honourable judges took oath under PCO issued by General Pervez Musharaf when he dismissed the right wing bonapartist regime of Mr Nawaz Sharif and legalized his martial law, gave him the power to rule the country in uniform and to amend the constitution at his will and after first restoration allowed him to contest the presidential election in uniform]  like lawyers and political parties.
Let us take the case of Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday his brother the former attorney general of Pakistan an sitting MPA of PML-N from Toba Tek Singh his son (Raza Farooq) was made attorney general of Punjab against the established  criteria of competency and skill just for his and his family’s time tested affiliation  with the  Sharifs .

Can we expect the justice when uncle is a Judge with political views, [right wing] nephew Attorney general and father former attorney general and now a very important MP of  party in power. To find out an answer thankfully we don’t have to search hard. Justice Ramaday had answered that in one of his many television interviews [ A practice which itself is deplorable in British judicial tradition from which our judicial system has evolved] he said, “I never gave a judgment against Asif Ali Zardari  because my brother then the Attorney general was defending Nawaz Sharif government.” I have a problem with that Mr Ramaday because  justice delayed is justice denied, isn’t? If you were so sure Mr Asif Ali Zardari has done something wrong you should have convicted him

Old PCO judges remain in control

under the law. When you were not giving decisions in cases of Mr Asif Ali Zardari to prove the twisted logic of your impartiality, you were in fact hindering his release and his bail. Mr Asif Ali Zardari spent 11 years in prison without being convicted setting a record in judicial persecution. It was not you impartiality your honour, ill beg to say that the  truth is you never did that because it was not in the script that Saif-ur-Rehman had written. The plan was never to fight corruption , or to serve justice, rather it was to delay justice, to drag the cases for long time to keep Asif Ali Zaradari in jail during the prime of his married life to break the will of Ms Benazir Bhutto, to continue a media trial of Bhutto-Zardari family , to destroy their popularity hence finish the PPP.
The cases were fake and weak and you never would wanted to give your judgment and  your brother was buying time from your respected court for his brilliant colleague Mr  Saifur Rehman to manhandle and torture Mr Zardari , so that he breaks, either divorce Ms Bhutto or accept the allegations of massive corruption. [Mr Asif Ali Zardari was tortured in custody without any intervention from the courts, in one instance his tongue was slit using a sharp object, his also suffered a permanent spine injury due to torture]

He was kept in prison for 11 year to break him so that either he divorces

Benazir

BB or accept the allegation, but he stood firm, when the Sharif  family ran away from the country like cowards , Mr Nizami of Nawa-e-waqat, one of the worse enemy of Bhuttos called Asif Ali Zardari Merd-e-Hur.
you can’t deny that  Sharifs are enjoying full support of judiciary in Punjab. Recently magistrates were appointed by Punjab government the appointment criteria was political support of PML-N, this was the clear violation of new judicial policy but no court acted. All the laws and morality comes into play only when PPP is involved, there is a lot of hue and cry against “jiyala judges” but when it comes to judges who are sympathizers of PML and JI not a single word is uttered.

The Pundits in Islamabad are already talking about regime change and “minus one” formula in Islamabad.Why Benazir and Asif Ali Zardari are not acceptable? The roots of it lies in the structure of Pakistani state, which have been called a “National Security State”.

The reason is BB was not part of national security state the idea which civil-military bureaucracy had carried forward since our first war with India in 1948. BB was termed as a threat to national security. Now let us determine theory of national security state.
• India is our enemy number one.
• America will give us funds, so that we remain a national security state because its in our interest and if we serve American interest its not problem as long India remains our enemy.

Now let analyze internal factors which protects national security state .

Military ,intelligence agencies , courts ,religious parties and right wing media  they roughly form what left wing analyst use to call “establishment” whose meaning has been distorted by the channel mafia. I remember in recent television interview of Mr Majid Nizami [editor and own of Nawa-e-waqt group one of the leading media business houses of Pakistan which controls Urdu and English news papers and  a television channel ]was saying we can never be friend with India and we should not waste our time we  should fire our all nuclear weapons towards India . what worse can happen in the process we are already dying because India has stopped  our water supply. A similar Media Pundit, Mr Javed Chaudhary always concludes his popular programme by saying “we can never be friends with India”.

Coming back to our original discussion why BB was a threat to a national security state .
Reason number one she never considered India as enemy number one , her  first state visit to India was first step towards normalization and thankfully Mr Rajiv Gandhi also rose to the occasion and acted very sensibly . This was a direct threat from BB to national security state because the whole Idea of national security state revolves around India (enemy ) .
Agencies never accepted BB olive branch towards India . Her first government was dismissed , her role in normalization and her meeting with Mr Gandhi was part of the charge sheet along with the allegation of appointing great Urdu poetess Fehmida Riaz, the “Indian agent” in minister of culture.  One of the first act of Mr Sharif’s government was to confiscate Miss Raiz’s passport and persecute her.

Now we are left with role of judiciary in protecting national security state.  BB’s government was overthrown on charges of corruption and judiciary endorsed that decision but the decision was different for Mr Sharif whose government was one of the most corrupt and repressive.

The Chief Justice which restored Sharif’s government was Nasim Hassan Shah, one of the judges who hanged Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He later confessed on tv , that his decision was flawed and motivated by anger.

His decision to restore Sharif’s government was hailed as a “judicial revolution” which destroyed the “doctrine of necessity” for ever. What happened after that is history

Forget about all this, General Hameed  Gul on national television had said BB was a threat to national security so he created IJI and funded it till the end.

Now one IB  chief Breg Imtiaz made stunning confessions on TV which proves that the establishment itself created ethnic tensions in Karachi by creating the stunt of “Jinnah Pur”. This led to brutal  military operation, the ethnic hatred it created still is burning Karachi. This shows how far this state can go for its security objective, even if it means to kill its own people.

So now we come to present situation president is not going to dissolve assemblies , the government of Pakistan Peoples Party despite all the propaganda and ill faith about it which exist in the Urban chattering classes has shown remarkable progress. Some things must be mentioned which this government achieved

1) It sent Pervez Musharraf home

2) Faced with the worse global economic meltdown whose scale and effect was unmatched in human history , Peoples Party government didnt let the country collapse. Not a single bank or big corporation sank in Pakistan.

3) This government was able to defeat Right wing on war against Taliban, its strategy of signing Nizam-e-Adel exposed Taliban and its supporters and for the first time public opinion in Pakistan shifted in support of war against Taliban

4) After Mumbai attacks, its was soley due to presence of democratic PPP government that India showed restraint. A war was avoided.

5) Benazir Income Support programme, may be inefficient and riddled with errors but it has sowed the roots of a welfare state in Pakistan. After 30 years of Neo Liberalization PPP government once again put the concept of “responsibility of state towards the poor” back on agenda. It is a great achievement.

This government cannot be defeated by political means, a martial law is practically impossible, establishment’s hope are on Yousaf Reza Gilani to persuade him to become the next Farooq Legari. I hope he will not follow his footsteps esp looking at his political fate. If this card fails they have only one card left. Its the judiciary
Only judiciary  can protect our national security state and they are in a position to bring down this government. Judiciary’s recent decisions on Nawaz Sharif and Hafiz Saeed have reaffirmed their comittment to the ideology of “national security state”.

if pakistaan and india becomes friends then from where army and intelligence agencies will loose all their strength. One needs to read Dr Ayesha Siddiqa’s landmark book to understand the real character of Pakistan Army

Pakistan cannot afford to live in illusions, the judiciary must understand that it should not try to control the democratic regime. It has to show impartiality which unfortunately is not visible any more!

Xeno is a Lahore based student of Engineering, his interests includes politics and history and he is a supporter of Pakistan Peoples Party