Justice in the dock in
Pakistan By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Even as the US Congress is
repositioning over support to Pakistan's military
establishment, President General Pervez Musharraf
has suspended the chief justice of the Supreme
Court.
Iftikhar Chaudhary faces
allegations of abuse of power, but the more likely
reason for his suspension is that the chief
justice's judicial activism was beginning to
challenge the military elite.
Chaudhary
has been declared "non-functional" and placed under
virtual house arrest pending
a scheduled appearance before a special judicial
court on Tuesday. Javed Iqbal, the
second-senior-most judge, has been sworn in as
acting chief justice.
The move against
Chaudhary has prompted widespread disapproval,
with the opposition expressing outrage and lawyers
and other segments of civil society adding their
voices to the chorus.
There have also been
calls for strikes and protest marches, and the
Musharraf-led government faces one of its stiffest
challenges since the general seized power in a
bloodless coup on October 12, 1999.
Pakistan is due to have presidential
elections this year, and Musharraf will seek
re-election even though, despite his promises, he
still wears a uniform. Pakistan is often referred
to as a country where "the government is of the
army, by the army and for the army". Musharraf is
both president and chief of army staff.
Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain, the president
of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League and a former
prime minister, commented that the action over
Chaudhary was "an internal matter of the Pakistan
Army and the judiciary". Chaudhary was appointed
by Musharraf in 2005, and Musharraf, wearing his
uniform, announced the news of the judge's
"misconduct" after the two had had a five-hour
meeting on Friday.
This follows extensive
media coverage of Chaudhary's son joining the
police service despite apparently having failed an
English-language entrance paper and of the top
judge's alleged abuse of travel privileges, among
other accusations.
Nevertheless, what is
more likely to have brought Chaudhary down is that
he was bold enough to try to make the military
elite answerable in the court of law.
The hunt for missing
people Thousands of people are believed to
have been thrown into secret detention facilities
in Pakistan without ever being brought to trial,
especially those rounded up in the name of the
"war on terror".
Many of the detentions
have occurred in the restive province of
Balochistan, where Pakistan's Military
Intelligence has picked up hundreds of youths
suspected of affiliation with the separatist and
shadowy Baloch Liberation Army.
In the
past, relatives of the missing people filed
complaints with the courts, which then formally
informed the Interior Ministry. Routinely, the
ministry would simply advise that the intelligence
agencies were unaware of a person's whereabouts,
and the files would gather dust.
Chaudhary
changed this trend. He followed up cases
diligently and frequently issued warnings to the
attorney general to take action. He also made sure
that an army officer serving in the influential
Crisis Management Cell appeared to answer for the
intelligence forces.
As a result, some
missing people returned home, and they quickly
accused the intelligence agencies of detaining
them. Chaudhary ordered all of these agencies to
appear in court to face the charges.
Last
year, Chaudhary prevented the government from
selling off the majority of state-owned Pakistan
Steel Mills to a private consortium, claiming that
kickbacks were involved at the highest level in
the privatization process of the country's biggest
corporation.
Political mobilization The event has given the much-scattered
opposition the opportunity to mobilize. Pashtun
nationalist leader and parliamentarian Mehmood
Khan Achkzai has called for a strike on Tuesday in
Quetta, the capital of Balochistan. Transporters
in North West Frontier Province have made a
similar call.
Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the
president of the six-party opposition religious
alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, has called
for an all-party conference to devise a single
joint strategy for Tuesday, when Chaudhary is due
for his hearing.
Domestic turmoil of this
kind will provide a test for the White House,
which up to now has stood by its ally in the "war
on terror" despite Islamabad repeatedly
backsliding on promises on democratic change. The
Democrat-controlled US Congress is expected to be
a bit less tolerant, and might even try to block a
deal for the supply of F-16 fighter jets to
Pakistan.
It is estimated that the United
States currently provides military assistance
worth US$100 million a month to Pakistan, and
since 2001, when Musharraf turned against the
Taliban in Afghanistan, the country has received
some $20 billion in assorted aid.
With the
US administration becoming increasingly frustrated
with Musharraf's apparent slow progress against
al-Qaeda and the Taliban and with the Democrats
looking for excuses to distance Washington from
Islamabad, the Chaudhary incident comes at a bad
time for Musharraf.
Syed Saleem
Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau
Chief. He can be reached at
saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
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2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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