Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

I am talking about the article 58-2b of the constitution of Pakistan...and not the present or future assemblies...although...the assemblies are also laughable... :D

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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

yes yes

aao ji aaoo aab Raj key looto Raj key khahooo
aab aik naeen das das sarey mehal banaoooo

ofcourse tumam gidh jammah ho rahey haan , Pakistan ka gosht nojnay key liya
abi mara bi naeen hay , lakin pehlay sey decide ker rahey haan key kon sa gidh kon si tangh kahey ga and kon bazoo and kon kia

now no one will be able to stop these gidhs( vulchers) from looting pakistan

God bless Pakistan

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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

You are not impressing anyone with your 'holier than thou' mentality. Reveal your alternative or person/ party you support than we can talk.

2011 Brides
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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

Reveal me a Musharraf pre-1999 and I will reveal a leader post Musharraf, I am not trying to impress anyone, I just speak out my mind, I am not afraid of criticising wrongs whether the act is of someone I support, can you?

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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

What makes you think that people who support BB/NS or anyone can not distinguish between right or wrong like you do?

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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

If I don't see condemnation of wrong acts, I assume they can't see wrong actions.

BTW, I am waiting on Mush pre-1999

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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

This thread is not about pre-Mush '99. This is a political forum and everyone has some dirt on them. It is easy to play the one who supports right than wrong.

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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

there we go…last nail in the coffin of pakistan n its awam. musharaf has sunk to new lows, not that this thug has any credibility or shame to begin with. to come up with such outrageous laws and ordinances he is throwing pakistan into the hands of looters, murderers and corrupt politicians while himself leading the pack.a truly sad n dark day in the history of pakistan when 1 man became GOD. :nook:

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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

Then you shouldn't be asking me for an alternative either:

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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

Thank you for not revealing. Just cut me from your right wrong lectures next time.

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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

No, you are trying to dodge and run away, you couldn't answer my question of pre-Mush '99 as you had no answer so you played holier game and said 'oh this thread is not about that'... my logic is buried in that question, can you answer? Next time you shouldn't be asking about alternatives when you didn't know who the alternative was in 1999 (pre Mush).

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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

I never doge the question. This topic is different. Open a thread about pre-99 Mush and I will make a post. I mainly ignore guppies who play right vs wrong game with me, if they already don't know it.

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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

Ironically you can ask a question about the alternatives without opening a thread :)

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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

^ may be people with power can split threads :D

Timepaas
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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

Ha ha ha

;) Munnda Badnaam Howa ;)
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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

this is not a "national reconciliation ordinance" rather it is **"National shameful ordinance". **this is an insult to pakistan and its people.

sab chor beithay hoye han.

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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

but wait..why are we all upset about this? I mean this is exactly what happened in 2002 when Mush encircled himself with corrupts and virtually pardoned them all of their sins..only thing different this time is he is making it official. End result is still the same. I dont get it. This is so lame. What crocodile tears.

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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

oh well

From today’s Dawn.

** The failing experiment**](http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/cowas.htm)

By Ardeshir Cowasjee

SOME 59-odd years ago, Mussalman leader Abul Kalam Azad, a genuine true maulana, a profoundly educated man, who habitually and openly imbibed of that God-given fine malt drink and made no bones about it, was heard to murmur one balmy evening, ‘Ummmm, but we must not forget that India is a country whereas Pakistan is an experiment.’

It is truly amazing, and we must thank the Almighty and also founder-maker Mohammad Ali Jinnah, that despite the best efforts of all who have ruled over the past 60 tumultuous years, the experiment, though a failure, still exists in some sort of retarded embryonic form.

President General Pervez Musharraf, whilst discoursing last week before an audience assembled to hear him elaborate on Erra how successfully (truly) Pakistan dealt with the 2005 earthquake, sent out a message to the members of Pakistan’s civil society who tend to criticise and to moan and groan about the country’s lot, that they should not be pessimists, that they should not despair and not spread despondency. As exhorted friend Pundit Ayaz Amir wrote in this space last Friday — ‘Never say die.’

** We must at least congratulate ourselves that we are better than many other lands of our ilk — we at least do not eat each other, we may kill and maim but we stop there. Our president merely tried to humiliate his Chief Justice and has ended up ruing the day. In some countries in the Third World chief justices are often last seen or heard of when the president or king is having his breakfast. After that, they simply disappear.

Much praise must be rendered to Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry who very correctly has desisted from presiding over the benches adjudging the petitions involving the president and his legitimacy to stand for re-election. And more praise to him for having his priorities right — he is worried about the fate of the ‘disappeared’, the missing citizens of Pakistan casually picked up and either hidden away or killed by our fearsome ‘agencies’. More power to his elbow!**

As this is being written, the circus is on in Islamabad, in Karachi, in Lahore and in Peshawar and the presidential allies in the half-empty assemblies are dancing the presidential jig — somewhat prematurely some might say. But Musharraf is a determined man and, law or no law, yesterday was the designated day for his re-election which took place under quite unusual circumstances. That its verification is open to a decision to be taken much later this month by the Supreme Court of Pakistan matters not a whit.

** Last week, Dawn News’s Tim Sebastian interviewed the general and did a good job. Thankfully, the ‘core issue’ did not crop up, we were at least spared that, but we were given a healthy dose of ‘harmony’, of the upholding of the Constitution and of the doing of all things in a manner constitutional. **Now, the Constitution as upheld by the general is essentially a one-clause document. Let us take Article 89, the mother and father of the National Reconciliation Ordinance:

‘Power of president to promulgate ordinances. — (1) The President may, except when the National Assembly is in session (no impediment), if satisfied (easily done) that circumstances exist (easily conjured up) which render it necessary to take immediate action (after having wrestled for months), make and promulgate an ordinance as the circumstances may require.’ This ordinance ‘shall have the same force and effect as an Act of Parliament…’

Well we all know what the ‘circumstances’ were which arose on the evening of Friday, October 5, when the already infamous and hated-by-the-pessimists National Reconciliation Ordinance was promulgated. The election of the next day was to be given some sort of ‘legitimacy’ by the participation of the Pakistan People’s Party. This did not materialise. The various “Capos di Capis” exercised their right to boycott, to spoil the party.

** During his Dawn News interview last Thursday, when the subject of the Supreme Court decisions was raised, the general stated that, of course, naturally and constitutionally he had accepted the decisions handed down. When asked if this would apply to the decision expected in the matter of the petitions filed by the presidential candidates, Justice Wajihuddin Ahmed and Amin Fahim, the general clearly stated, ‘Let’s see what the verdict is, then we will decide.’**

What exactly did he mean? Was he thinking in terms of an emergency, or even martial law, were the verdict to go against him? We will not know this for a while. A word of warning to him, a reproduction of the words spoken by Winston Spencer Churchill in the House of Commons in 1904, over a century ago: ‘Martial law is no law at all. Martial law is brute force. Of course, all martial law is illegal, and an attempt to introduce illegalities into martial law, which is not military law, is like attempting to add salt water to the sea.’

The entire matter of the deal is, to put it mildly, disgusting. And such is how many citizens regard it. Some dozen email messages have already tumbled into my inbox cursing the Musharraf-BB NRO Ordinance. To reproduce but one:

‘Apparently we need reconciliation so badly that corruption, embezzlement and murder no longer count. Legislators cannot now be arrested. Their misdeeds are to be considered by an “ethics committee”. So we have assemblies with licences to rob and to kill. Not only will legislators be given indemnity but their bankers and thugs as well, men such as Hussain Lawai, M.B. Abbasi and that former drug lord Rehman Malik. So black is white in the new Pakistan, murder and loot all in the name of ‘national reconciliation’— more like national humiliation. Bhutto banned booze in a last ditch attempt to save his neck. Musharraf, to save himself, now embraces embezzlers and murderers. What price accountability? Before reconciliation we need truth and justice. BB should admit her errors, ask for forgiveness and return some of the (expletive deleted) loot. Only two moral choices left — leave the country or join the Taliban.’

Under US tuition, General Musharraf preaches to us the delights of democracy. A short passage on that subject should appeal to him:

‘We learn from history that democracy has commonly put a premium on conventionality. By its nature it prefers those who keep step with the slowest march of thought and frowns on those who may disturb the ‘conspiracy for mutual inefficiency.’ Thereby, this system of government tends to result in the triumph of mediocrity — and entails the exclusion of first-rate ability, if this is combined with honesty. But the alternative to it, despotism, almost invariably means the triumph of stupidity. And of the two evils, the former is the less.’ (Why Don’t we Learn from History? by B.H. Liddell Hart, [1971])

Reconciled to expediency](http://www.dawn.com/2007/10/07/ed.htm#1)

A LAW may be deemed necessary by those who frame it but that consideration alone doesn’t make it right. While questions of constitutionality are best answered by the experts, bad laws stick out a mile and can be identified even by the untutored. The National Reconciliation Ordinance promulgated on Friday is a prime example of a bad law even though it meets the yardstick of enforceability. It favours select individuals or groups and discriminates against others. In the case of NRO 2007, the prime beneficiaries are Ms Benazir Bhutto and her Pakistan People’s Party as well as Mr Altaf Hussain’s Muttahida Qaumi Movement. President Pervez Musharraf also gains indirectly because the ordinance wins him new supporters and rewards existing allies, thereby making his future prospects more secure. While some are favoured, the amnesty’s conviction clause and its 1986 to 1999 time frame have been so devised as to exclude Mr Nawaz Sharif from the list of beneficiaries. By announcing a blanket amnesty for public officials accused of corruption, the country’s taxpayers have been stripped publicly of any lingering hope they may have harboured that the culprits would be brought to justice one day. Spare a thought too for the family members of those killed by political rivals, or the relatives of ordinary citizens mowed down at a bus stop by terrorists toeing the party line. True, pending criminal cases will be reviewed and not dismissed outright. But the political pressure that could be brought to bear on the review boards, especially by organisations with fearsome reputations, may well reduce the exercise to a sham.

How will it be determined that a particular case was framed solely for political reasons? Even if vendetta politics did play a role, that does not necessarily mean that the case was entirely without substance. If a criminal case has been on the books or pending in court for 20 years, the fault for this inordinate delay lies with the investigating agency and the prosecution. In this connection, NRO 2007 also papers over the state’s failure to deliver justice in a timely manner to both the accused and the plaintiff.

Friday’s ordinance is all about personal gain and has little to do with ‘national reconciliation’ — a misnomer in any case because all stakeholders are not on board. The ordinance strengthens the view that crime goes unpunished in Pakistan, and that too with official blessing. This is not the right signal to send to a public that is on the verge of losing all faith in the system. If anything, the corrupt and the criminal will be emboldened further by this get-out-of-jail-free pass handed out by the government in the name of national reconciliation. Nor can analogies be drawn with the truth and reconciliation process that served South Africa well in the 1990s, for the operational term there was ‘truth’. The accused had to confess to their crimes and express remorse, and even then not everyone was given amnesty. What we have is not reconciliation but resignation to expediency. Perhaps the only positive in all this is that in terms of future accountability, elected representatives have been extended privileges similar to those already in place for military officials and members of the judiciary.

The News:

** A backward step

*](The News International: Latest News Breaking, World, Entertainment, Royal News)
*
Sunday, October 07, 2007

The loftily-titled National Reconciliation Ordinance promulgated on the eve of the presidential poll is a rather sordid document that aims to whitewash the crimes of those politicians and bureaucrats who made hay in the decade between two bouts of military rule stretching from 1986 to 1999. It aims to grant an amnesty to all those allegedly involved in the misuse of power and other misdemeanours in those heady days and smoothens the way for the re-election of the president. Painstakingly thrashed out between representatives of General President Pervez Musharraf and PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto, it paves the way to a power-sharing deal between the former foes and perfectly captures the cynicism inherent in the current murky political scenario.

The ordinance is highly selective in its reach. It will withdraw all cases against lawmakers and bureaucrats registered between January 1, 1986 and October 12, 1999 in which no conviction has been made. All cases instituted by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) inside or outside Pakistan during this period will also be withdrawn. It singles out for favour the high and mighty who were busy with their hands in the till during that inglorious decade. Its main beneficiaries are likely to be Ms Bhutto and her spouse Asif Zardari and a clutch of their cronies. It will also bring relief to a number of other prominent luminaries, some of whom have since changed sides and now grace the upper reaches of the government benches. Parliamentarians seem to have been given new privileges to blatantly misuse their powers, or at least receive special treatment, under the ordinance. The powers of NAB have been severely clipped, with special committees on ethics to be set up in the national and provincial assemblies to clear any move by police to arrest lawmakers. On the other hand, it conveniently leaves out of its embrace the currently rebellious former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, against whom many of the more serious cases were instituted in 2000. It has no crumbs of relief to offer the millions of ordinary criminals who face charges for far more minor crimes. The MQM, a powerful ally of the government, also stands to benefit through the ordinance following last-minute changes to the draft. Thousands of its workers charged with serious offences during the period also stand to get a clean chit.

The government is selling the ordinance as an attempt to eschew the politics of political vendetta and victimisation and is heralding its promulgation as the dawning of a new era of tolerance and fair play. It is nothing of the sort. It will be seen as nothing less than the act of a beleaguered president turning the clock back and scuttling the values and ideals espoused when he took power vowing to purge politics of corruption. The PPP will come out of the episode no better. If there were any doubts that the country’s largest party has sold its democratic soul for the sake of its leaders’ skins the document should dispel them brutally. The NRO has been mauled by the opposition as being nakedly opportunist, designed to further the interests of those throwing a lifeline to the present dispensation and potentially illegal. Even those on the treasury benches have made dissenting noises and some are threatening a legal challenge once the presidential election is safely over. As for the long suffering people of the country, it seems like a retrogressive step harking back to an earlier, darker age. The message that has been sent to ordinary Pakistanis is that it pays to be a politician and it pays to involve oneself in corrupt practices.

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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

The Nation:

** Blanket amnesty**](http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/oct-2007/7/editorials2.php)

THE President calls it a milestone, independent voices call it just about the most discriminatory piece of legislation in the country’s history. Whether it actually does qualify the latter dubious distinction or not, it is nevertheless not too proud a moment in our constitutional history. The National Reconciliation Ordinance, 2007, was promulgated by the President this Friday. It gives near blanket protection to the politicians who have been “falsely involved for political reasons or through political victimisation in any case initiated between the 1st of January, 1986 to 12th of October, 1999.” The full scope of this indemnity also covers bureaucrats and bankers.
The Ordinance is the final manifestation of the much talked about deal between the military regime and the Pakistan People’s Party. In exchange for tacit support for the President in yesterday’s presidential elections, the PPP leadership managed to come out squeaky clean from all the pending corruption cases against them. Now, the Party’s Chairperson can enter the country without considering the prospect of arrest. Though the Ordinance covers her rival PML(N) as well, a considerable number of cases have been instituted against the N League after the specified time period. Asked during a live TV interview whether this “reconciliation” will also extend to Mian Nawaz Sharif, the President replied, “After the election, we will see about (Nawaz’s return) and reconciliation.” Clearly, this is a People’s Party affair; the rest of the acquitted were just lucky enough to get in the way.
The most audacious thing about the bill is the mockery it makes of the basic concept of the rule of law. If Benazir Bhutto were adamant that the cases against her were false, politically motivated ones, it would be a seemingly incorrect but not absurd claim; court cases being used for political victimisation is, after all, an old practice throughout the third world. But the way to get around that is to have the courts themselves acquit the accused parties through the law of the land. The sadder part is that even if this piece of legislation were not an ordinance, but a bill, put before any chamber of legislature during the specified period, it might have been passed by an overwhelming majority: why shouldn’t it? It grants near total immunity to the ruling class. There has always been disconnect between the rulers and the ruled, this Ordinance makes it official: the rulers, from across the political divide, can get away with anything.

Once again, Musharraf..widely popular with opinion makers in Pak. Wonder how does it every single time.

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Re: Benazir-Musharraf deal: National Reconciliation Ordinance ready

Shame, shame, shame!

The pits!

So much for Jusitice. RIP.