Of hatred and resentment on lovers’ day

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

Democracy in Pakistan appears to be under a curse. As elsewhere in the country, the social and political circles in the Frontier metropolis somehow felt that a menacing kind of standoff was probably in the making in the shape of Saturday night's constitutional ping-pong between the Supreme Court and the Presidency.

Just when the world at large was celebrating the Valentine's Day with a show of love and flowers, the television commentators and analysts in the land of the pure were frothing at the mouth against what they said was the arrogance and the obstinacy of the ruling coalition of PPP-ANP-MQM.

The undeclared war between the federal government and the apex court started when the 14-member full bench of the SC gave its verdict against the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) and the Pandora's Box got opened or reopened. Last week the Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry came on a visit to Peshawar and showed his displeasure at the fact that court verdict was not being honoured. He gave the example of the chief of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) against whom the government had failed to take any action.

The present standoff has its origin in the days when the honourable judge of Supreme Court Justice Khalil Ramday was about to retire. The CJ wrote to President Asif Ali Zardari that Justice Ramday should be appointed as ad hoc judge of the SC. Due to constitutional hitches, this could not happen and the judge ultimately stood retired.

On Saturday, the president issued a notification that he was pleased to appoint Chief Justice of Lahore High Court, Justice Khwaja Sharif, as a judge of the SC and in his place the senior most LHC judge, Justice Saqib Nisar, should take over as the new CJ. At 7-30pm on Saturday, the SC took a suo motu notice of the development and hurriedly formed a three-member SC bench, which struck down the notifications as unconstitutional.

The three-member bench asked the two LHC judges to ignore the government notification and continue performing their duties in the Punjab metropolis. The verdict was widely seen as a sign of judicial activism. It went a long way towards widening the political divide in the country. Pro-CJ lawyers danced ecstatically at the assertive manner in which the SC struck down the presidential orders.

At the same time, senior jurists opined that President Zardari's orders were not unconstitutional and he had acted well within his jurisdiction. Prophets of doom popped out of television screens and kept the nation wide awake by getting on to the nerves of already tense viewers.

Shaheen Sehbai and his group alleged that the PPP government wanted to induct its men into the judiciary to elicit verdicts of its own choice and liking. Sehbai group blew the standoff out of all proportions. Much of what the group said was its wishful thinking which it had been imposing on its hapless viewers for the last six months or so.

Senior media analyst, Najam Sethi, suspected that the latest furor was the direct or indirect result of the meeting between the Punjab Chief Minister Mian Shahbaz Sharif and the COAS General Ashfaq Parvaiz Kayani. He said that Mian Shahbaz had rather wanted the meeting to be secret but it could not remain so due to the peeping Toms of the media.

Another senior newspaper editor, Abbas Athar, was visibly unhappy with what the judiciary as a whole had done to the country over the past 62 years of independence. He said that it was judiciary that under the law of necessity had put a stamp of authentication on the rules of military rulers like Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Ziaul Haq and Pervez Musharraf. In a television talk show, Abbas Athar said that Ziaul Haq showed his disdain for the constitution by saying that after all it was a booklet of a few pages which he could tear and throw away.

On Sunday, however, the tempers calmed down when Attorney-General, Anwar Mansoor, held an hour-long meeting with the CJ in his chamber and communicated to him an official message of reconciliation from the federal government. As always, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani made a speech that annoyed none but pleased everyone.

Meanwhile, chief of his own faction of PML, Mian Nawaz Sharif, used the opportunity to further fuel the fire and open the gates of confrontation. Addressing a meeting of his party's central executive committee in Punjab House, Islamabad on Sunday afternoon, he called upon the president to appoint the 70 judges recommended by the High and Supreme Courts.

As if to make his presence felt, Mushahid Hussain of PML-Q jumped into the fray by saying that the ruling PPP was testing the nerves of army, judiciary and media. He said that instead of submitting himself to law as an accused, President Zardari was trying to come out of the crisis as a political martyr.

When contacted by a private television channel, Senator Haji Adeel of ANP said that he would give his reaction to the new situation after the central executive committee of his party met and sought consultation from senior leaders. When pressed by the channel, he said that anything that he said off hand would be his personal opinion and not the standpoint of his party.

Giving out a sample of his mental agitation, chief of Jamaat-i-Islami, Syed Munawar Hassan, commented on the situation by saying that the people should come out on the streets to show solidarity with the judiciary and get its decisions implemented by the government.

Former law minister, Khalid Ranjha, was of the opinion that President Zardari had issued the notifications after elaborate consultations with law experts who had given him sane and wise counsel.

Some of the independent observers noted that the timing of the new political storm coincided with the start of peace negotiations with India. Some powers wanted to give New Delhi the impression that the administration with which it was holding parleys stood on a shaky ground.