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).
@Bloody civ
The military certainly played its cards in the 90’s but it was not the ruler. The failure of democracy in the 90’s is not due to the military or Musharraf, it is due to the politicians, namely BB and NS.
These same politicians were voted back in by the people and you see the same mess as the 90’s today.
The last 2 years have proven that militancy and street agitation are what work in Pakistan. Elections, parliament, civilian or military rulers don’t matter. Perhaps some people see “democracy” and a great future in this, I don’t.
Yes, as the Urdu saying goes, we are all stark naked in this bath house…
Chaudhary had no problem working under Musharraf prior to March 9, 2007… hardly the personification of the opposition to military rule…
And I’ve got serious issues with people of Aitzaz Ahsan and Asma Jehangir’s stature and liberal inclinations, including the good lady whose tearful (and heartfelt) complaints forced Sherry Rehman to apologize, allowing Maulvi Nawaz Sharif, Maulvi Imran Khan, Maulvi Qazi Hussain Ahmed and other such rightwing nuts to spearhead their movement, in particular the PML-N of the Supreme Court attack infamy, and the JI ghundas and their street power…
If Chaudhary was to be reinstated in the end, the PPP should have stolen the rightwing’s thunder and done it long before things came to such a head… the rightwing will take all the credit now, and what should have been a victory for the PPP a year ago is now a defeat…
I cannot help but feel what Tahira Abdullah said to Sherry Rehman… save this party (the PPP that is)… as horrible as they are at ruling, as horrible as it is for them to have submitted to a Zardari presidency, as terrible as it was for them to have defenders of honor killings in their cabinet, every other alternative to them that has a shot at power has a decidedly rightwing bent… saner elements, Ms. Rehman included, should come to the fore and do something before it is too late… the thought that people of Maulvi Nawaz Sharif’s ilk will be champions of a free judiciary and democracy should have remained a big joke, but because of the PPP’s incompetence, the worst has come to pass…
Brutus was a Julius companion, till he saw that the Cesar had exceeded. History is full of examples like that.
And people are confused, CJ is not justice. It it the people who are the judge and jury of the independence of judiciary. It is they who will ultimately guarantee justice. If today the CJ disappears (God forbid), the equity and justice that throbs in the people will not stop.
No matter happens in future, unbenounced to him, Sultan Musharraf gave an ultimate gift to the people when his goons slapped the Chief Justice of Pakistan and mishandled his wife. The message was, if the Chief Justice of Pakistan can be slapped like an ordinary criminal, then no one means anything.
Many thanks to the photographer who took that picture. If you were Western photographer, you would be doing interviews with Larry King, etal. You deserve our gratitude for spawning a movement that no one knew then.
“NRO was the demand of the PPP”. PPP had no authority or power, so they could only make a demand. It was Mush and the military that had total de facto power who allowed PPP/politicians a total immunity from law. For the NRO to stand and be confirmed by the Supreme Court, the second martial law of Nov 3 was necessary, and duly delivered.
The decade of the 1990’s started inauspiciously by the ISI’s Political Wing’s dirty work as fully disclosed by ex-ISI chief Gen. Asad Durrani’s affidavit and admitted by Gen. Mirza’s written statement, both submitted to the Lahore Hight Court in the Mehran Bank case. The admissions made no difference whatsoever to the military’s total impunity. “There was no Mush or NRO in the 1990’s”, but there was the Zia-created Nawaz Sharif. The musical chairs of military dictatorship wrought failure followed by civilian failure and the impunity with which all responsibility is abdicated, started with the first Martial Law (or Gen. Ayub becoming Defense Minister in 1954). However, while the military can and does force the civilian’s out, time and time again, the civilians cannot force the military in (and save themselves from facing the music through a continuation of regular elections). “Every man for himself” is a perfectly good place to start an evolutionary process towards democracy.
A judge appointed by a military ruler, and who served that ruler for many years has been restored through street agitation and mobs creating disturbances and destruction.
I don’t see the justice or democracy here.