Adil Najam
In what is clearly a historic development, the Prime Minister of Pakistan Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani addressed the nation to announce the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. The address, which was supposed to be at 2AM Pakistan Time, was late by many hours but the subtext was true to the rumors that had been circulating in Pakistan all day:
Here is the full text of the Prime Minister’s speech:
My dear countrymen Assalam-o-Alaikum,
I am speaking to you at a time when our country is standing at a critical moment. No country can make progress without political tolerance and the PPP and lawyers have been together in struggle for upholding democracy in Pakistan. Shaheed Mohtrama Benazir Bhutto actively participated in the struggle of restoration of judiciary was launched by lawyers. Benazir Bhutto wanted free judiciary and supremacy of the constitution.
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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.
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Adil Najam
Much, too much, is afoot in Pakistan. Talk is rife of changes: in the President’s stance; in the Prime Minister’s tone; in the President himself; in the international response; in the Military’s preferences; even, maybe, in the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Change seems to be afoot. It is not clear what. But it is clear that whatever it is will leave much, too much, still in limbo. There is no one that anyone seems to have much confidence in.
The media is being gagged again. Civil society forces remain defiant as ever in the face of increasing crackdowns. The politicians fail to inspire confidence. And the military and international actors remain kingmakers. The dominant sense one gets is of a country that is afraid of its own politics. Very very afraid.
The litany of breaking news tells the story (all from the homepage of The News today):
GEO News blocked in different cities of country. The transmission of Geo News has been blocked in some parts of Karachi, Hyderabad, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Quetta, Multan, Rawlakot, Muzaffarabad, Deepalpur and Sargodha. The concerned officials have directed the cable operators to place Geo News channel at the tail end, making it difficult for the viewers to watch the channel. PML-N Chief Nawaz Sharif, Tehreek-i-Insaf Chief Imran khan and Senator Babar Ghauri condemned the blocking of Geo News.
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