As this ‘crisis’ has dragged on for months now, more and more commentators are now voicing the belief that all sides should pull back from the brink - President, CJ, political parties etc.
It’s never too late
Amina Jilani
On May 25 in Karachi President General Pervez Musharraf told “a select gathering” that the shock effects of May 12 will be over, that the chapter would be closed and recommended that we should all put it behind us. Well, the ‘shock effects’ are far from over as the judges of the Sindh High Court so amply demonstrated on May 30. The chapter cannot be closed or put away. The General was off the mark. Where he was right was in saying that it will be of no avail to hold a ‘probe’ into the events of May 12. Of course it will be of no avail. We and the world are fully aware of the who, the how, and the why - as the General is aware - and it no longer needs to be spelt out. The international and national media have done their job and the London connection lies fully exposed. The pity of it all is that Musharraf has allowed himself to be aligned with a party that has become a stigma for his regime. It appears, quite transparently, that he now finds himself not only at arm’s length with reality but in complete denial of it. The tragi-comedy of his seeming belief in his own righteousness stems from his obvious reliance upon hard core sycophancy, and his banishment of any person able to tell him to his face that he has relied and acted upon the worst possible advice.
In his seven years in power Musharraf has transformed himself from a military general into a world statesman, thanks to 9/11 and the support and succour received from the US president and his administration, and the other leaders of the western world. He needs to now employ the statesmanship he has picked up and the political acumen gleaned along the way inside his own domain. He has to stop relying on luck and bad advice, and stand up and do good by his nation and himself. It can be done, it is never too late. After all, the sole superpower is valiantly standing by him, regardless of all, because it and the rest of the world are wary of whatever alternative there may be. Whatever it may be, signs are, according to most international analysts that the army will not be going away. It will be very much part of whatever political process may fall upon us. Though, Musharraf himself in an interview with Reuters in February stated that “the people of Pakistan and the Pakistani parliament will select a person who would lead if I am not there,” such cannot be the case in the present junglified circumstances. The political parties, all of them, are in disarray, and the judiciary, the dominant factor in this present impasse, is not as united as it would like to be and despite its recent noises (which we have heard so many times before) about its independence this remains in doubt - apart, that is, from the honourable judges of the Sindh High Court who have led where the others must follow.
This republic is now held hostage to a spat between a general and a judge. The General needs to make a strategic retreat. The Judge, unless he can fully clear himself of whatever charges, frivolous or otherwise, have been leveled against him, will forever remain under a cloud. One cloud now floating is his skating over, in the affidavit he filed in the Supreme Court last week, the matter of how the Chief Justice of Pakistan found himself in Army House on the forenoon of March 9. Did he ask for an appointment with the head of state, as he has, so we have been told, done on many a previous occasion, or was he summoned, which the General has clearly told us he was not? (The subsequent happenings that afternoon have yet to be clarified.) Do any of the charges in the presidential reference against Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry hold good? If one, or two, do, did the Chief Justice do wrong? He, in his exalted position, cannot be absolved on the excuse that multiple wrongs make one right. If others, the hundreds if not thousands, in positions of power abuse that power it does not follow, normally, in a democracy not ruled by corruption, that it is right or excusable. To end on a lighter note, homegrown firebrand Tariq Ali, writing in The Guardian on May 16 (‘Law and order’) has come up with a solution to our problematic state of national affairs: “The general should discard his uniform, the judge should forego his black robes and the two men should battle it out on the electoral terrain without hindrance from the MQM or the numerous apparatuses of the state.” Afterthought: The situation is indeed grim. Globe trotting Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has reportedly cancelled out on a second free trip - this time to delectable London Town.