For once Pakistani judiciary is with people of Pakistan and not with Junta. This shows we as a nation have matured now, and there will be no marshal laws or emergencies in the future. Time to say good bye to criminal generals, their corrupt cronies for good.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070914.PAKISTAN14/TPStory/TPInternational/Asia/
Pakistan’s judiciary standing up to Musharraf
The Supreme Court and its Chief Justice, not terrorism, the opposition or street protests, has brought regime to brink of collapse
SAEED SHAH
Special to The Globe and Mail
September 14, 2007
ISLAMABAD – **The modernist edifice of the Supreme Court building in Islamabad has cast a much larger shadow over the future of the regime of General Pervez Musharraf than Pakistan’s political opposition.
The general and the court are set for a head-on clash next week that will define the future of democratic governance in Pakistan when it hears a case on his eligibility to stand for re-election as president.**
The two sides have been at a state of near war since March, when the U.S.-backed Gen. Musharraf tried to sack Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, apparently fearful that the judge could not be relied upon to rubber stamp the government’s arrangements for presidential and general election due by the end of this year.
There is rising speculation that Gen. Musharraf, anticipating that the court will rule against him, is preparing to declare a state of emergency or martial law.
**“I see the end of the road for Musharraf. Pakistan is not a Kuwait or a Saudi Arabia,” said Aitzaz Ahsan, a member of Pakistan’s upper house of parliament and the lawyer who took the case to the Supreme Court that saw the Chief Justice reinstated in July.
“This may be a Muslim country but it is not a Middle Eastern Muslim country. It is a South Asian Muslim country and here the constitution and the judiciary matter.”**
Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the “war against terror,” is struggling under a wave of political violence. At least 15 soldiers from an elite commando unit were killed and 11 wounded yesterday in a suicide attack at an army canteen about 100 kilometres south of Islamabad. Separately, in the southern port city of Karachi, gunmen riding on motorcycles threw a grenade and opened fire on a bus, killing six people and wounding six.
However, it is not terrorism, campaigning by political parties, or street protests that has brought the Musharraf regime to the brink of collapse. It is the Supreme Court, an institution with no guns to enforce its will.
The Supreme Court has ruled against the government in a string of important cases over the past two years. It found against the privatization of a steel mill and ordered the government to produce before the court citizens that had “disappeared” into the hands of the security forces. As well as ruling against the suspension of Chief Justice Chaudhry, the court ordered the release from jail of opposition politician Javed Hashmi last month.
And it plunged Gen. Musharraf’s election plans into disarray when it said that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif must be allowed to return to Pakistan from seven years of exile. A petition on Mr. Sharif’s subsequent deportation from the country will also come before the Supreme Court in the next few days.
Hamid Khan, one of Pakistan’s leading constitutional lawyers and author of Constitutional and Political History of Pakistan, said: “The judiciary has played second fiddle to the army in our history. The situation now is unprecedented.”
Previously, Pakistan’s top court had served the army, condoning the many military coups that Pakistan has seen in its 60 short years of existence, including the 1999 takeover by Gen. Musharraf when he deposed Mr. Sharif. In 1979, the Supreme Court sanctioned the execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first elected prime minister, which followed another military overthrow.
Bilal Hasan Minto, a lawyer and lecturer in constitutional law at Lahore’s University of Management Sciences, said that previous instances of the government trying to bully the Supreme Court had come under periods of martial law.
“We are supposed to be living under a constitutional dispensation. Yet the executive is flouting the orders of the Supreme Court. This is alarming. I would rather that we were under martial law. What we have now is anarchy. At least under martial law, you can predict what will happen,” Mr. Minto said.
Mr. Minto said that the political parties are relying on the courts, rather than undertaking the hard work of political grassroots activism and opposition.
An Islamist political party, Jamaat-i-Islami, brought the legal challenge to Gen. Musharraf’s eligibility to be president. Nawaz Sharif’s party, Pakistan Muslim League-N, was unable to mount street demonstrations to his deportation - but its members went running to the Supreme Court to file a petition.
Had the courts stood up to the army in the past, the country’s politics would not have been so tumultuous, Mr. Khan said.
“Previous chief justices were gutless people.”
Mr. Chaudhry’s strength has been a surprise as he came with no great reputation when he was appointed Chief Justice in mid-2005 simply because he was the longest-serving judge on the Supreme Court. Until he was suspended from office by the government, he was not popular among the country’s lawyers.
In a speech earlier this week, Chief Justice Chaudhry declared that the superior courts had to “do justice even though heavens may fall.”
In order to avoid accusations of bias, the Chief Justice will not head the Supreme Court bench to hear the petition on Gen. Musharraf’s candidacy to be president.
The case revolves around two issues. Under the Constitution of Pakistan, the president of Pakistan is not allowed to hold another office. And no public-sector employee can stand for political office until two years after retiring.
President Musharraf does hold two offices - he is also head of the army. And, even if he gave up his uniform, he would still have to wait two years before standing for president.
Most lawyers believe that, on the basis of law, a ruling against the government is a foregone conclusion. However, it was the Supreme Court that found a way to sanction Gen. Musharraf’s position once.