The Lawyer Charade: Forget Principles, It’s Another Trick
By Ahmed Quraishi
Islamabad , Pakistan
If I ever wanted proof that the lawyers’ movement ceased to be a neutral populist movement for justice and had instead been hijacked for dirty political tricks, I found it last week.
It was stunning to watch the leadership of the lawyers’ movement traveling to Lahore to meet Mr. Nawaz Sharif and sweet-talk him into joining the mayhem and chaos that will be unleashed in the name of the so-called ‘ long march’ next month.
If the movement is unbiased and is for justice and includes all Pakistanis, why put the movement in the service of a single politician like Mr. Sharif? Why not keep the movement unpoliticized? How can Mr. Kurd and Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan guarantee that Mr. Sharif’s own narrow political goals won’t supersede the movement’s universal goals? [I won’t ask about Mr. Sharif’s original sin of ordering his supporters to scale the walls of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and storm the building to intimidate the judiciary, for which he is yet to apologize. Maybe Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan, in the interest of serving a noble cause, will want to ask Mr. Sharif to do so?]
The fact is that mounting evidence shows that this movement was hijacked by Pakistan’s wily and dirty politicians, with the active support of Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan and Chaudhry Iftikhar. The lawyers and the ordinary supporters are either ignorant about this, can’t comprehend it, or are simply ignoring this bitter truth.
First, Chaudhry Iftikhar partially politicized his cause [ouster from job] by picking Aitzaz Ahsan from the PPP which at the time had a clear interest in creating trouble for the sitting government. The former CJ’s car moved around the country with PPP’s flags. No matter how much Aitzaz Ahsan waxes eloquent about his love for justice, he can’t deny that he was biased in favor of his party boss who was secretly negotiating a return-to-power deal with the sitting ruler. Mr. Ahsan manipulated the intensity of the street chaos by the lawyers in accordance with the temperature of the secret talks between his party boss and the sitting ruler.
Second, when Iftikhar Chaudhry was released from his house arrest a year ago, the first thing he did was to drive to the Islamabad residence of Mr. Zardari and get his blessing. Why didn’t Mr. Chaudhry Iftikhar drive to see Mr. Nawaz Sharif, for example? He did it on Mr. Ahsan’s advice, and the good and noble Mr. Ahsan thought he’d be doing a favor for Mr. Zardari by allowing his party to take the entire credit for the lawyers’ movement. When Zardari snubbed them for whatever reason, Mr. Ahsan and Chaudhry Iftikhar decided to approach Mr. Sharif.
The point is this:
Both PPPP and PML-N first used the lawyers’ movement to take revenge from the former ruler, Pervez Musharraf.
- When PPPP got the federal government and PML-N the Punjab government and ministries in Islamabad, both parties distanced themselves from Chaudhry Iftikhar.
- Now when PML-N wants to target PPPP, Mr. Sharif has suddenly rediscovered that Chaudhry Iftikhar has a good cause that needs backing.
Aitzaz Ahsan is a smart guy. He knows that party ‘owners’, late Benazir Bhutto and now Asif Zardari, only care about themselves. BB had no problem that her self-imposed exile destroyed the political careers of PPP members. She was content staying abroad for a decade and enjoy her newfound wealth [and defend this wealth in courts]. After a decade of doing nothing, Mr. Ahsan found something to do, maybe even create a name for himself independent of his patron party. Good for him. But then why the hypocrisy of keeping one foot in the lawyers’ movement and the other firmly in the PPPP?
Nawaz Sharif’s reason for supporting Iftikhar Chaudhry one year ago was to get back at Musharraf, a glorified version of kindergarten revenge. Nothing more. Today, Mr. Sharif’s purpose is to grab the federal government. He believes his right to rule Pakistan was snatched away from him in 1999 and he wants it back. Now it is a good time to unsettle the PPPP government. That’s why Mr. Sharif didn’t hesitate to call Mr. Zardari ‘Musharraf’s friend’, despite the fact that Zardari played a crucial role in forcing Musharraf to resign in humiliation and that Mr. Sharif could not have done it alone no matter what.
That’s dirty Pakistani politics at its best. And so, next month, we’ll see another round of internal destabilization in Pakistan with this ‘Nawaz Sharif Movement’, and scores of innocent lawyers and the public will be made to think this is change but it’s not.
Forget the judiciary and Iftikhar Chaudhry. This is about Nawaz Sharif’s march to power in Islamabad. If you accept this, then hurray to this march, but please don’t talk about ‘independent’ judiciary. There is nothing ‘independent’ about Iftikhar Chaudhry’s ‘march’.
WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM
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