Adil Najam
The Lawyer’s Long March from Lahore to Islamabad is literally hours away as I write this. Arrests of activists continue and a number have just been arrested in Lahore. As if things were not complicated enough, the unseating of the Shahbaz Sharif government in the Punjab and subsequent political developments have added new fuel of Pakistan’s many political fires.
The Zardari government, already losing some important allies from within its own ranks, has gone all out to make sure that the Long March does not succeed. The Lawyer’s movement and Nawaz Sharif (for rather different reasons) are going all out to make sure that it becomes a game changer. In the next many hours we will begin to get clues about which it will be.
Meanwhile, there can be no better commentary about where we have been and come from on this then these clips from now blocked GEO TV. It shows before and after ‘power’ comments from Farooq Niaq - until recently the PPP’s Law Minister and now Speaker of the Senate (and, therefore, next in line to the Presidency).
This news item, from Dawn, is of great importance in understanding what has been happening in Pakistan, and why.
I will be ecstatic if this turns out to be true but not just yet.
First, it’s two hours later than given time and still no speech.
Second, we have seen announcements before.
Third, I want to see fine print about restoration at what terms.
So, I say they are under pressure but battle is not won yet.
Aamir, apologies for the double post. You’re half right. Chaudhry was appointed by Mush whom he served faithfully. Until he started creating ‘trouble’ and was referenced against, and when that did not work, sacked through the martial law of Nov 3.
Also, imagine the guy responsible for physically assaulting the Supreme court 12 years ago, presuming to lead the movement for restoration of judiciary today! That is what happens when politicians are not allowed to undo themselves and come to a natural, logical, political end after repeated failure through regular elections. 58(2)(b) disrupts this natural undoing that incompetent politicians deserve and are quite capable of. Military coups not only disrupt this process but trap national politics in a time warp. A time warp that distorts, reverses and destroys democratic evolution and allow the same politicians to re-emerge ‘cleansed’ and ‘forgiven’. Indeed, unfortunate acts like the NRO make a bad situation worse.
If the process of regular elections and full term Parliaments is allowed uninterrupted and uninterfered with by the military, and if still people keep electing the same failures after 20/30 years, and learn nothing, and the nation fails to produce any improvement, whatsoever, in the quality of (at least some) politicians… then at least it will be difficult to blame the military for it. It would be more difficult to argue for a lasting impact of 1958-2008, if the military can keep its political nose clean for the next 25 years.
@Bloody civ
You drag military into everything so that you can hide the fact that its the politicians in charge of Pakistan during the 90’s. They are the ones who committed gross corruption and crimes against Pakistanis, and they continue to have the votes of Pakistanis.
NRO would not have stopped Zardari becoming President, neither did it stop Musharraf from losing election.
However NRO, parliament and election have proven irrelevant today as street agitation and mobs, alongwith militancy is what has succeeded in Pakistan in the last 2 years. On the basis of that, your future 25 years from now is not so great.
Congrats!
Chief justice, dismissed by Musharraf, will return to post!
Protests work :D
Aamir: “The military certainly played its cards” = illegally manipulated = fudged = unconstitutionally perverted = frustrated. What legal business is it of the army or the ISI to “play its cards” in contravention and defiance of the law and the institution’s constitutional role, e.g. Re. Mehran Bank? I see you once again chose to ignore the fact that NS was a creation of Zia and the military. But I accept that you choose to be selective in what you respond to. After all, this is not an argument.
“These same politicians were voted back” after the military had made a deal with them and already given them the illegal NRO.
As to claims to what the future holds… why argue. Lets wait and see…. over the next 10, 25, 50 years. I pray you will live happily and healthily to see it all and beyond. I too, perhaps, might get to see some of it at least.
Hope everything goes well, since I see Fundamentalist faction of Army in this blackmail.
A good day for democracy