Long road ahead

Published : Apr 24, 2009 00:00 IST

SECURITY PERSONNEL DETAIN a suspected militant at the police training school on the outskirts of Lahore, on March 30. Eight trainees were killed and scores of others were injured when gunmen stormed the complex.-MOHSIN RAZA/REUTERS

SECURITY PERSONNEL DETAIN a suspected militant at the police training school on the outskirts of Lahore, on March 30. Eight trainees were killed and scores of others were injured when gunmen stormed the complex.-MOHSIN RAZA/REUTERS

PAKISTANIS are cherishing every moment of the apparent calm that has descended over the country with the restoration of Iftikar Chaudhary as Chief Justice, as this may only be the proverbial lull before the next storm.

One issue that had refused to go away since General Pervez Musharraf announced emergency in November 2007, despite a change in government and Musharrafs own humiliating exit, has been resolved with Chaudhary resuming office.

But the bitterness in the political sphere continues, and it is a simmering pot that may soon come to the boil. The ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the opposition Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) or PML(N) are still locked in an eyeball-to-eyeball situation in the countrys politically most powerful and all-important Punjab province.

It was this political feud that ignited the crisis that led to Chaudharys dramatic restoration on March 16. For the lawyers, who had struggled for months to get the government to give back Chaudhary the position from which he was ousted by Musharraf, and had almost given up hope that this would ever happen, it was an unexpected boon.

Despite the stirring poetry by Aitzaz Ahsan, the leading light of the movement for the restoration of the judiciary, adl ke aiwanon mey sun lo, asli munsif phir aayenge (mark this, all you who sit in the halls of justice, the real judges will return), it was clear that the lawyers could not have continued their struggle indefinitely on their own. Cracks had appeared in their ranks and it was to consolidate the movement once again that the leadership called for a long march of lawyers and all others who wanted to see Chaudhary back in his seat.

The march, it was planned, would begin on March 12, when lawyers from all parts of the country would begin congregating in Lahore. On March 15, they would start to Islamabad. The plan was that on reaching the capital the next day, the rallyists would stage an indefinite dharna in front of the Parliament until the judges were restored.

Analysts can only speculate about how successful this protest might have been had the PML(N) not decided to throw its weight behind it. The lawyers had been wooing party leader Nawaz Sharif, who always reiterated his support to Chaudharys cause and an independent judiciary, but who remained non-committal about his or his partys participation in the proposed March 12-16 rally. Nawaz Sharif was waiting to see how a case against him in the Supreme Court, which sought to disqualify him and his brother Shahbaz Sharif from elections, would go.

The turning point for the lawyers, and Chaudhary, came when a three-judge bench decided against the Sharifs. In bad judgement, the PPP saw an opportunity to take over the Punjab government. Governor Salman Taseer, a PPP-appointee said to be close to President Asif Ali Zardari, made a constitutionally dubious decision to dismiss the Shahbaz Sharif provincial government, within hours of his disqualification.

The proper course would have been to invite the PML(N) to nominate another Chief Minister and ask the party to prove its majority on the floor of the Punjab Assembly.

But Taseers pretext was that with the PPP pulling out of the coalition government in Punjab, following the Sharifs declaration of war against the party, the PML(N) did not have enough numbers. His calculation, and that of others in Zardaris inner circle, was to make a go for the government with the help of the PML(Quaid), a leftover of the Musharraf regime.

They counted without second thoughts in the PML(Q), most of whose members were broken away by Musharraf from the Sharifs. But since Nawaz Sharifs return, and his emergence as the countrys most popular political leader, PML(Q) members have appeared keen to return to the parent party. Result: the PPP slipped on a wicket of its own making.

Not surprisingly, the political battle led to Nawaz Sharifs declaration of full support for the long march. In the countdown to the march, he went on a whirlwind tour of the Punjab province, asking people to join him to bring about what he called a revolution in the country. The first step of this revolution, he declared, would be the restoration of Chaudhary for an independent judiciary.

Nawaz Sharifs own track record with the judiciary was less than perfect the Chief justice had to flee for his life from his chambers as Nawaz Sharifs party workers stormed the Supreme Court during his Prime Ministership. But he appears a changed man since returning from his seven-year-long exile, even though how real these changes are will become obvious only when he returns to power.

At his public meetings, Nawaz Sharif repeatedly urged government officials, especially the police, not to obey orders from the unconstitutional Governor Raj in the province. As the long march drew near, and the prospects of violence during its journey grew higher, all the talk in Pakistans drawing rooms and television studios was about a khaki intervention.

No one could predict what form it would take, but it was said that the military would prefer not to take over the running of the country at a time when it was still trying to recover from the image-deficit bequeathed to it by Musharraf.

Unnerved, the PPP government began a crackdown on lawyers and political activists all over the country. It started taking steps to prevent the long march from taking off. Massive containers were used to seal off roads and entry points leading into the capital, including the Grand Trunk (G.T.) road from Lahore. In Islamabad, the area around the presidency and Parliament resembled a dry port, as one journalist described it.

For leaders of a party that prides itself on its democratic credentials and its hard-fought battles at the barricades, the arrests and attempts to prevent the march were a hard-to-explain turnaround. It seemed as if many of the PPPs stalwarts were unhappy. Already, Zardaris style of leadership had turned off many within the party. Benazir Bhutto loyalists had been sidelined.

The March 4 elections to the Senate, which is the Parliaments upper house, underlined the differences within the party. Many old-timers were denied tickets. And when it came to choosing the Chairperson of the Senate, Zardari overlooked the veteran Raza Rabbani for parliamentary rookie Farook Naek. Naek, a lawyer of no particular standing, had helped Zardari in his court cases, and had already been rewarded with the Law Ministry. All this, along with the much talked about differences between Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani over their constitutional roles and powers.

In the run-up to the long march, these differences seemed to be hovering right under the surface of party discipline and loyalty. But it was only Sherry Rehman, the Minister for Information and Broadcasting, who broke ranks to resign after the government disrupted transmissions of Geo Television in the days before the march. A former journalist herself, Sherry Rehman had pledged to journalists as the PPP came to power that there would be no more government attempts to muzzle the media. The orders to disrupt Geo transmissions were given behind her back.

As one drama played out in the public sphere, the so-called khaki intervention had already begun behind the scenes. Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani played a key role as the West stepped in to defuse the crisis. Kayani, acting in tandem with Gilani, held several meetings with Zardari in a bid to head off the crisis.

Meanwhile, the American, British and even the Australian envoys were at it too. Shuttling between Nawaz Sharifs Raiwind farmhouse to the presidency and the Prime Ministers office, they tried to prevent a showdown that was a recipe for prolonged political instability in Pakistan at a time when the Barack Obama administration in the United States was trying to forge a new strategy for the region.

At first, Zardari was unyielding. When he realised that he had shrunk his corner, he gave a little ground to the Sharifs with an announcement that the government would file a review petition against their disqualification. But the PML(N) chief knew he was on a high moral ground and refused to budge from Chaudharys restoration, saying he was not in this for himself or his brothers government, but for systemic change in the country. And Chaudharys restoration was the one demand that Zardari would not give in on.

The efforts to avert confrontation continued; so did plans by the Sharifs and the lawyers for the long march, and attempts by the government to foil it with mass preventive arrests and prohibitive orders.

March 15 was a Sunday, but for once, there was nothing laid-back about Lahore. Undeterred by teargas and baton-charges, crowds gathered for the march. At about 2 pm, Nawaz Sharif broke through the police cordon around his house in Model Town. The police made no attempt to stop him, and as he made his way through the city, his procession drawing more and more crowds as it went along, the administration stood back. Lahore is Nawaz Sharifs political backyard, and no minion of the government was going to place obstacles in his way on this day of unprecedented developments.

The surge of people seemed to have caught the PPP government unawares. As the mammoth procession crossed the Ravi river on G.T. road, the three principal decision-makers President, Prime Minister and Army Chief, not necessarily in that order went into a huddle. When they emerged a little after midnight, and Pakistan Television announced that the Prime Minister would make an address to the nation, it was clear that the decision to restore Chaudhary had been taken.

At 5.50 am that morning, Gilani literally ushered in what many Pakistanis describe as a new dawn for the country. He announced on national television that Chaudhary would be restored on March 22, a day after the incumbent Abdul Hameed Dogar retired.

On the appointed day, Chaudhary was triumphantly escorted to the Supreme Court by lawyers showering rose petals. But his job is now more complex than where he left it. A full plate of constitutional complexities is before him. Legal experts are puzzling over the implications of the Supreme Court being restored to the pre-November 3, 2007 position.

Does Chaudharys restoration mean that all decisions of the Musharraf-appointed Supreme Court thereafter will be considered invalid? Or will the government pick and choose decisions to validate and those to throw out? Will the courts indemnity to Musharrafs November 3 emergency be validated or thrown out? Will the Chief Justice reopen petitions to the National Reconciliation Ordinance, under which Musharraf wiped out the corruption cases against Zardari and his late wife Benazir Bhutto? What happens to the judges hand picked by Musharraf? And to the judges appointed by the PPP-led government?

The government surrender has decidedly made Zardari look weak, notwithstanding the partys declaration of confidence in his leadership. On the other hand, it has enhanced the stature of Gilani as a consensus builder for continually reaching out to the Sharifs during the countdown to the long march, and spearheading efforts to persuade Zardari to climb down.

Beneath the apparent triumph of peoples power, the entire saga underlined the pre-eminent positions of the Army and the U.S. in Pakistan. General Kayanis stature has shot up. For steering clear of the temptation to take over and clear the mess, the Army chief has been praised as a defender of democracy.

Nawaz Sharif was the political victor. As well as basking in the glory of his principled politics his commitment to Chaudharys cause to the extent of walking out of the PPP-led federal coalition he has managed to show that when it comes to the Punjab province, he and his PML(N) are undisputedly number one.

But the game is hardly over. As promised, the government has filed a review petition against the Supreme Court disqualification of the Sharifs. But in an indication of the political battles ahead, Governors rule continues in Punjab, and the PPP has still not given up efforts to form a coalition with the help of the PML(Q).

Meanwhile, Nawaz Sharif is already planning ahead for his return to power. At this point, it seems certain that he will win any election that is held in Pakistan, but for Nawaz Sharif, such an electoral victory would be pointless without first ensuring that a PML(N) government is not ranged against an all-powerful Zardari, whose term in office is until 2013. His next big battle with the PPP will be over returning the Constitution to its 1973 version and correcting the balance of power.

Joining hands in exile, Benazir Bhutto, the assassinated PPP leader, and Nawaz Sharif signed the so-called Charter of Democracy in 2006, in which this was an important clause. Nawaz Sharif is now pressing the PPP to live up to its beloved leaders vision. It is a million-dollar question if Zardari can be persuaded to give up the powers he inherited from Musharraf, and turn into a lame-duck constitutional figurehead.

Whether Nawaz Sharif will opt for more confrontation to achieve his objective is not clear. For the moment, he has declared that he and the PPP

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