Why Not Musharraf in the Dock?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
When not slitting each other’s throats, or pronouncing them kafir (heathen)—which is increasingly the favourite sport of the denizens of ‘The Land of the Pure’—intellectuals and laymen alike indulge with impunity in interpreting the law of the land according to their superior wisdom.
Throat slitting was indulged into with abandon on the holy day of Ashura, the 10 th of Muharram, in the heart of the capital, Islamabad’s twin city, Rawalpindi—and within hailing distance of GHQ, the bastion of raw power in Pakistan. Not surprisingly, it was the bloody face of the sectarian divide that has its fault lines running all over the Pakistani terrain. In the name of Allah (who else?) devotees of the majority Sunnis and minority Shiias pounced upon each other with bestial ferocity and blood flowed as it always does in such confrontations. That’s how the faith is being defined and defended in Pakistan.
Interpretation of Pakistan’s law and commentaries, in spades, on the country’s justice system by self-anointed legal and constitutional ‘experts’ has followed swiftly on the heels of the Federal government’s decision to haul up the discredited commando autocrat, General Pervez Musharraf, in the court of law on treason charges. The cause relates to his infamous Emergency rule of November 3, 2007, when he suspended the Pakistan Constitution for a second time on his watch and trampled the law of the land under his military boots. That, the government thinks, was an offence cognisable under Article 6 of the constitution.
In plain words, Musharraf is to be put in the dock for treason, which the constitution deems as a grotesquely offensive action against the country’s law; and for that reason, precisely, the law prescribes the maximum penalty of death, or, in the event of its commutation, life imprisonment.
But no sooner than Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar had finished informing the nation of his government’s decision to try Musharraf that the Musharraf-brigade swung into action to decry the decision and ridicule it as a vendetta against their man.
The charge of the Mush-brigade is being led—again, not surprising at all to those who have taught themselves on the Byzantine nature of Pakistan’s newly-liberated news media—by a media that claims to speak for the people of Pakistan, or at least articulate their sentiments.
To be fair to the media it isn’t all the media but a section of it; the one in hock to Musharraf’s overseas mentors and patrons and who are also known to be bank-rolling and under-pinning the most vocal segment of the Pakistani media.
Those not suffering from the loss of short-term memory should have no problem in recalling an episode that transpired only a few months back. The CEO of a TV channel —which claims to be the largest network in the family of ‘private’ television channels that have mushroomed in recent memory, had resigned because of a ‘leaked’ e-mail of his employer. In that e-mail the employer had allegedly gone to his foreign-pay masters with his collection hat asking for a few million dollars—in seed-money—to kick off a media campaign against the judiciary in Pakistan.
One doesn’t know whether the channel got that seed money or not, but it seems to have quickly taken the leader’s role in the ‘save-Musharraf-against-a-vindictive govt.’ charge of the Musharraf aficionados against the current incumbents of Islamabad’s power corridors.
To get a feel of the channel's desperate bid to pronounce their man, Musharraf, not-guilty even before the government got anywhere near a special trial court to proceed against the bombastic commando, one only needed to watch a program of November 18. He looked pathetic (as he mostly is) with his repeated argument that the government didn’t have ‘witnesses’ to back up its legal case against the commando. And then he made another pathetic—also, brazen—attempt to put words into the mouth of retired Justice Usmani of the Sindh High Court, when supposedly seeking his expert views on the Musharraf trial. Justice Usmani was quite forthright and judicious that the government would offer evidences and witnesses, if needed, only when the court proceedings got underway. But this self-appointed media advocate of Musharraf still insisted that the government had no ‘witnesses’ to back up its charge.
Witnesses ? Come on, there should be limits to being naïve or cynical to the point of being absurd. The whole nation of 180 million people was witness to that arrogant rhetoric of November 3, 2007, when the commando, sporting a black sherwani (he might have thought his heinous action disparaging the constitution would look proper and plausible with him donning the official garb for a ruler) hectored the country and justified his imposition of the Emergency. It’s an open-and-shut case. The snooty, power-inebriated, dictator feared the Supreme Court, and especially its fearless Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry—whom he could neither buy-off nor intimidate—and sought to pre-empt a verdict against his re-election as president while still holding on to his military command.
The Mush-brigade is taking care of both the media and the legal off-shoots of the case, simultaneously, in what clearly looks like a well-co-ordinated and equally well-financed rear-guard action.
Finances they don’t have to worry about. There are their foreign pay-masters, reliable and generous as ever. They were the ones who’d apparently given the so-called ‘water-tight’ guarantees to Mush that no harm would be allowed to come to him if and when he chose to return to the scene of his crime. They are, obviously, still intent on bailing out their client if their bags of money would help pave the way for it.
While the anchor is minding the media front for his erstwhile benefactor, the legal platoon is being led by that irascible and insufferable man, Ahmed Raza Qasuri, whose badge of honour is that he was instrumental in sending ZAB to the gallows.
The currency-in-trade with the Mush-brigade is that his trial would open a Pandora Box that should best be left closed. But why, one might ask.
So be it. Let the Pandora box be kicked open—wide open—if doomsayers’ wailing and chest-beating comes to it. This meek-and mute nation of 180 million dumb-founded people has suffered for so long—and paid unimaginably high price for it—largely because its Pandora Box has gone on filled to capacity—and in fact overflowing. The poor people of Pakistan have never had a chance to see the ugly, grotesque, faces of their demons.
Adventurers of every stripe had their appetite for unbridled power whetted to the brim because of smug assurance that there would be no accountability for them and they could count on getting away with murder. Bonapartes came and lorded with impunity on the country and none dared to question them. The Mush-brigade seeks to keep the lock on the box because they fear the beans being spilled on their man’s crimes.
Fear-mongering is another weapon of the Mush-brigade’s armory. They want to scare Nawaz and cohorts to beware of the khaki’s backlash if their former chief is humiliated or dragged through the courts. They are predicting doom for Nawaz and democracy.
That’s all humbug; nothing but un-adulterated poppycock. No one has brought so much disrepute to the khakis as this commando Bonaparte. He’s the one who has dragged the army’s repute and respect with the masses into mud. They should covet the high moral ground that would be their reward if Mush, the musketeer-in-khaki, is made to pay for his infatuation with power that compromised the good name of the armed forces, collectively.
It isn’t just a matter of holding a glorified law-breaker accountable for his misdeeds. What’s at stake is the over-arching sanctity of law in Pakistan.
What comes to mind as most relevant to this situation is a phrase that CJ Iftikhar Chaudhry used in his November 2008 address to Harvard University, following the acceptance by him of the university’s Medal of Freedom awarded for his noble services in defence of the rule of law. Recalling the bitter struggle the Pakistani civil society had waged on his behalf against the dictatorial tyranny of Musharraf, Justice Chaudhry said the whole issue boiled down to one simple question: ‘should there be rule-of-law in Pakistan or the rule-of-man.’
That question is still going begging for a clear and categorical answer in Pakistan, five years since that Harvard address, and with Justice Chaudhry now only weeks away from his retirement. The bane of Pakistan, to date, is that it has not been able to unshackle itself from the feudal chains in which only the powerful—man—matters and lords over the national terrain, while paying only lip service to the supremacy of law.
That has to change, or the country will become unstuck. Its fault lines are getting bigger and all too visible. If the Taliban are running amuck and posing a real and immediate danger to the integrity of the country, who’s to blame for enabling them with a casus belli to declare war on Pakistan? Was there a Taliban presence in Pakistan, much less the menace they’ve become, before Mush, in his quest for permanent power, delivered Pakistan on a platter to them by joining George W. Bush’s war on terror?
What difference there’s—in real terms—between the Taliban not according any sanctity or loyalty to the Pakistan Constitution and Musharraf who, in his hubris, trampled the same Constitution under his feet and flouted the rule of law as something he could dump into the trash can?
Ignoring a reality doesn’t make it any less real. Musharraf has as much blood on his hands—the blood of those civilians killed in the drone attacks that have carried his tacit endorsement of them—as the Taliban blowing innocent people up with planted bombs and suicide bombers.
Pakistan stands at a tangent where shutting our eyes to the truth could spell disaster for the nation. The Mush-brigade is crying wolf to sow suspicion in the minds of the people and fear in the hearts of the rulers. Hell would break loose, they are howling; don’t open the closet because it has too many skeletons stuffed in it. But the day to open the burgeoning closet has come. It’s now. It’s real. Bite the bullet, for god’s sake, or be damned. - K_K_ghori@yahoo.com
(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
