Democracy and Pakistan: Are They Compatible – II
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
America’s nine un-elected judges of the Supreme Court stay in office for lifetime. Imagine how important it becomes changing even one for the nation. Four Justices of the Supreme Court are over 70, and one 86 and he had been on the court for 31 years, writes Linda Greenhouse. Only the chief justice is privileged to have a car with a driver, the rest eight drive to the Court in their own cars, and live in the midst of people. Pakistan now shall have 29.
Recently, the Supreme Court of the USA invalidated the military commission set up by President Bush, in the case known as Hamden v Rumsfeld, for trying terrorism suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, giving the verdict that the commission needed authorization from the Congress. It was a great setback to the Presidential powers exercised by President Bush. In America the Supreme Court reviews its own verdicts in the light of the public good; in Pakistan, it provides validity and legality to the ill-formed governments.
The system works because even the most powerful man, the President of America, cannot do much about the Justices appointed once. Did it happen so in Pakistan, or for that matter, in any developing country? Judges and Justices often work there as handmaids of the man in power.
Such quibbles of Mr. Asif Ali Zardari (who inherited a democratic party as if it were a family property deed) about the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mr. Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry as these reflect a state of affairs the country of 167 million people is going through, and the respect accorded to the Judiciary there, “People are crying for roti, kapra and makaan, and not for Iftikhar Chaudhry… Gillani is prime minister because of the sacrifices made by Ms. Benazir Shaheed… Ms. Benazir Bhutto did not sacrifice her life for Mr. Iftikhar Chaudhry… I picked up straw by straw to save Pakistan…soon the slogan of Jeo Bhutto will reverberate in the President House too…” Are these barbs any different from those hurled by Mr. Mugabe at Mr. Tsvangirai when he says, “God appointed me, so God can remove me”. According to him “the result of the planned run-off had been preordained … we can’t ask the people to cast their vote … when that vote will cost their lives”. Is the rule of violence and thuggery any different from that of Pakistan?
In democracy there is no room for such novices as ‘the lucky sperm club” of the rich and powerful politicians. An analogy used by the richest man of the world, Mr. Warren Buffet, with regard to the children of the billionaires to survive as billionaires, befits the children of politicians as well. It is like choosing “the Olympic team from the children of Olymptians. It’s unfair to children, and to society”.
But it has happened so in Pakistan. Almost 80% assembly seats in the provincial and national assemblies are marked as personal, family properties, to be inherited and not contested. Dislodging an entrenched owner is a Herculean task, involving risk to the life of the challenger. What Jean Kirkpatrick, a former American ambassador to the UN once said about the Democrats is true of politicians in Pakistan. “Democrats can’t get elected unless things get worse, and things won’t get worse unless they get elected”.
No one mentions the sayings and deeds of the Founding Father of the country. Efforts are being made to make people believe that Pakistan was born, not on the 14th of August, 1947, but on the 27th of December, 2007, the day Ms. Benazir met an untimely and unfortunate death. Now her worshippers address the public meetings from behind a bullet-proof glass-screen. They did not enforce such precautions on her even after she had been targeted in Karachi during a homecoming parade. Naming a college student as heir-apparent is insult to senior Bhutto’s name. He earned his place in the hearts of the people, more by dint of his personality and performance, than for being the son of Sir Shahnawaz. Let Bilawal also earn his place. To keep warming a seat for him is anathema to democracy.
In America some say that George Washington did not become a king because he didn’t sire any child. It is an insult to even think so about such visionary people. The same is true of the Founding Father of Pakistan. He was for merit, and not for ‘sifarish’. Once he refused to help his close friend Mr. Asfahani who had sought help for none else but for Sir Ahmed Khan’s direct descendent Mr. Anwar Masood. “He founded no political dynasty to tarnish his name”, writes Professor Akbar. He made Lady Haroon, and not his own sister, Fatima, the head of the women’s wing of the all-India Muslim League. He prohibited his own brother from misusing his name after the creation of Pakistan. Democracy grows on such tall trees, not in the shade of under-ground shrubs.
Why did the new government fail to restore the judges? According to BBC’s Barbara Plett, Mr. Iftikhar Chaudhry’s main fault has been that he “stepped on a lot of toes while being the head of the Supreme Court … he held the ruling elite to account, he rattled the security establishment by pursuing the case of the “missing”, alleged terror suspects abducted and held incommunicado by Pakistan’s intelligence service, he took legal challenges to President Musharraf’s re-election… that was his biggest sin in the eyes of Pakistan’s military establishment”.
Deals made cannot remain hidden for long. And Mr. Asif Zardari’s fears in this regard are legitimate. Herald of May 2005 puts him on the title page, the way it had done in December, 2004, and writes, “Much like Asif Ali Zardari’s release from jail last November, his return to Pakistan from Dubai on April 16 has created waves that few can fail to notice. The rumors of a possible deal between the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Musharraf government have hit the grapevine with a renewed frenzy, this time making a reshuffle at the top in Islamabad appear imminent”.
That was then. According to BBC “a peaceful transition from military to civilian rule was part of a Western-backed deal that brought the PPP’s late leader Benazir Bhutto back from exile last year… under the terms of the deal, the then General Musharraf was to grant senior PPP leaders amnesty from corruption charges, step down as army chief and allow the party to contest relatively free and fair elections…and in exchange Ms. Bhutto agreed to support him as a civilian president”, writes Barbara Plett.
But, then something went wrong, according to analyst Rasul Baksh Rais. While President Musharraf delivered his side of the bargain, late Ms. Benazir did not, and Asif Zardari under pressure could not. The situation further became complicated when, as Mr. Rais puts it, “I think there’s been an understanding between Pervez Musharraf and Asif Zardari on the one hand, and on the other, between Mr. Zardari and Nawaz Sharif…the understanding between the latter is that the judges would be restored, and the understanding between the former is that Mr. Musharraf would continue as president, but there is a complex contradiction between the two”.
“There is a personal animus between Mr. Zardari and Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. Mr. Zardari accuses Iftikhar Chaudhry of complicity in a campaign to victimize him while imprisoned on what he says were trumped up murder and corruption charges in the 1990’s and early part of this decade.”
As if this Penelope’s web of the restoration of the judges was any less entangled, another factor also intones in. Mian Nawaz Sharif has been debarred from running in a parliamentary by-election. The court upheld a 1999 conviction of hijacking a plane carrying then army chief Gen. Musharraf. Does the judiciary of the country need any more to do to be labeled as politicized?
The man who hijacked the country in a military coup, who dismissed the Supreme Court under emergency rule last year, and who under an arrangement (called NRO), pardoned the charges of corruption worth billions of rupees against those with whom he had struck a deal, still sits in the President House, while the deposed judges run around in humiliation seeking help for their restoration. Democracies do not prosper in such an atmosphere of free-trade vindictiveness and injustice.
“What you and your colleagues have done has never been done in the history of the world. The whole world is indebted to you, Sir, it is an honor to talk to you… you are an inspiration to all of us. Please let us know whatever service we may be able to provide to you”. These words are spoken not by a relative of Mr. Iftikhar Chaudhry, but by the former US Attorney-General Mr. Ramsey Clark, the same Ramsey who in 1976 had traveled to Pakistan to defend Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
Islam is equally clear on the rule of democracy or consultative government. Professor Abou El Fadl explains, “A constitutional democracy acknowledges the errors of judgment, temptations, and vices associated with human fallibility… democracy does not ensure justice, but it does establish a basis for pursuing justice. Democratic system makes those in authority accountable, and this is consistent with the imperatives of justice in Islam. That system is un-Islamic and unjust, if it does not call the unjust to account”. Thus, democracy is incomplete, both in the West as well as in an Islamic system of government if it falls short of evolving an effective mechanism of accountability of those who show keenness to stay in power, and if it fails to facilitate the execution of justice for all.
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