Swift justice for Pakistan's
premier By Karamatullah K Ghori
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has many dubious
distinctions to its credit, quite easily making it
an oddity in the comity of nations.
For
one, it's perhaps the only example in contemporary
history in which its majority populace decided to
walk out of the federation, and that too in a
violent confrontation with the country's minority,
and hectoring, ruling elite.
It isn't
unusual for minorities in a country to seek
salvation by a parting of the ways with its
majority for a variety of reasons. The decades-old
struggle for emancipation of the Kurds in both
Turkey and Iraq is a case in point.
However, in 1971 - within a quarter
century of the founding of Pakistan - the majority
Bengali population in the eastern wing of the
physically divided country fought for their
independence from
tyrannical and
exploitative rule of the western half, and
ultimately won to establish the independent state
of Bangladesh.
Pakistan is also perhaps
the only country in the modern world that has
killed two of its prime ministers and hanged
another in the space of six decades. The country's
first premier, Liaqat Ali Khan, was assassinated
in Rawalpindi in October 1951; Benazir Bhutto was
killed at the same spot, in the same city, in
December 2007. Earlier, her father, the
charismatic Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, had been hanged,
in April 1978, on trumped-up murder charges.
Then last week came the bizarre conviction
by the Pakistan Supreme Court of incumbent Prime
Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani in Islamabad on April
26, for contempt of court.
The apex court
not only found him guilty of deliberately seeking
to undermine the authority of the country's
highest judiciary, but also of bringing it "into
ridicule" and "disrepute", becoming Pakistan's
first prime minister to be convicted while holding
office. He was sentenced to be held in custody
until the rising of court, a symbolic sentence
lasting 30 seconds.
Gilani's conviction
and sentence may not have contributed too much to
the roster of Pakistan's dubious distinctions, but
his aggressive refusal to honor the court's
verdict and step down as a consequence of it is
most certainly going to make Pakistan an odd state
out in the civilized world.
Gilani had
been hauled up for contempt because of his
persistent refusal to write a letter - as directed
by the court in November 2009 - to Swiss
authorities to restart proceedings against
Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari on
allegations of money-laundering.
Both
Zardari and his slain wife, Benazir Bhutto, had
been convicted by a Swiss court for money
laundering; tens of millions of dollars were found
stashed in Swiss banks in the couple's names. The
provenance of those funds was shady, and they were
due to be sentenced when Pakistan's then-military
dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, came to their
rescue with a one-man law wiping the slate clean
of a raft of cases pending in the Pakistani
courts, for corruption and embezzlement of
billions, against the couple.
Musharraf's
black law, for which he conjured up the dubious
title National Reconciliation Order, or NRO, as a
result halted proceedings against Benazir and
Zardari in the Swiss courts, as well as giving
amnesty to thousands of politicians, political
workers and bureaucrats who were accused of
corruption, embezzlement, money laundering, murder
and terrorism.
Zardari's then attorney
general, Malik Qayyum, a retired judge, wrote a
letter to the Swiss authorities, off his own bat,
asking them to suspend proceedings against the
couple. Qayyum, soon after, fled the country; he
has been nestling in Dubai in the United Arab
Emirates ever since.
Musharraf had his own
reason for obliging Benazir and her spouse,
Zardari. Musharraf wanted to cut a deal with
Benazir for power-sharing to ensure another five
years in the saddle for him. Benazir's price for
cooperation was the NRO, which Musharraf paid
willingly.
BB didn't live long enough to
share the spoils. However, Zardari had a windfall
because of the NRO, and with Musharraf soon out of
power, he became not only the principal
beneficiary of the NRO but also was catapulted to
become president in September 2008; Gilani had
assumed office in March 2008.
But the
Supreme Court's 2009 annulment of the NRO as
illegal and unconstitutional - and its directive
to Gilani to recall Qayyum's letter - was like a
blow to the stomach for Zardari, it appeared the
apex court was going for his jugular and bent on
depriving him of his billions.
His command
to his hand-picked sidekick, Gilani, was to defy
the court order and drag his feet. Gilani's
procrastination and persistent denigration of the
court's authority finally saddled him with
becoming the first sitting premier of Pakistan to
be convicted in office.
In an ideal world,
Gilani would bow to the court's verdict and exit
gracefully from office. But in Pakistan's
feudal-dominated political culture, succumbing to
authority - even that of the country's highest
court - is seen as being weak.
The track
record of the Zardari-Gilani duo, in their four
years in office, has been one of picking fights
with the judiciary at all levels all the time.
On cue from their leaders, party cadres,
minions and ministers of government have made fun
of the judiciary as a manifestation of their macho
moorings. Gilani has just recently given berths in
his expanded cabinet to some of those people,
people who have been named by the Supreme Court
for corruption and looting of the country's
resources.
Now cadres of the ruling
Pakistan People's Party have been primed to mount
public rallies in support of Gilani and his
blatant defiance of judiciary. Gilani was showered
with rose petals by party minions as he emerged
from the court following his conviction and
sentencing.
This ignores the crippling
effects a prolonged confrontation between the
political leadership and the judiciary will have
on an economy already in the pits, while the
social and political polarization between
pro-government and anti-government forces bodes
ill for a Pakistan already beset with the twin
evil of radicalism and terrorism.
Political pundits cringe from dilating on
how quickly it could fray the fabric of nominal
cohesion among its people and hasten the country's
eventual tryst with anarchy and the implosion of
its integrity.
Karamatullah K
Ghori is a former Pakistani ambassador, now a
freelance columnist and commentator. He can be
reached at K_K_ghori@yahoo.com
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