Wording of the April 20 judgment clearly shows the utter
frustration and chagrin of the three judges who seem to have been forced to
change their concurrence with the other two who declared Nawaz Sharif unfit for
premiership and membership of parliament. Next time round they managed to find
the straw that breaks the camel's back. Bravo! Justice could not have been done in the Panama
leaks instigated corruption, fraud and misdemeanor cases which are still
continuing if Mr. Sharif had remained in office and machinating tampering of
records about his past misdeeds. The Chairman of SECP is already facing trial
on that account.
Ironically, Nawaz Sharif missed completing his term for the
third time by nearly a year keeping intact the record that no prime minister in
Pakistan has completed his term. It is interesting that none of the parties
whose governments were sacked by the president under section 58-2B of the
constitution failed miserably in the follow-up elections, which means that they
had lost their popularity and right to rule when they were sacked. Even this
time every politician and educated member of the civil society had been asking
Nawaz Sharif to resign but he clung to power like a leech until his sins took
him down.
Areticle 58-2B was deleted in the 18th amendment
and now voices are being heard from some quarters that Mr. Sharif who was
disqualified under article 62-1F of the constitution is trying to muster the
support of other corrupt politicians to abolish this law that requires the
aspirant of a seat in the parliament to be just, honest and truthful. Indeed
the constitutional provisions are inadequate as the Quranic standard of uprightness
is given in Chapter 4 (An-nissa) verse 135 as below:
Although he owes his rise in politics and attendant
accumulation of wealth to army generals, Mr. Sharif has been quick to forget
favors and failed to get over the trauma of the death cell after a mutual
overthrow dogfight which Gen. Musharraf won. This man, his family and his
cronies simply hate the national army and seem to be prepared to compromise
national security in a bid to discredit the army and establish his absolute monarchy.
Mr. Sharif’s animosity of the judiciary and judges dates back
to his second stint as prime minister when he tried to amend the constitution
to make MNAs totally subservient to him and the supreme court struck it down as
bad law. According to Wikipedia “Chief Justice Sajad Ali Shah,
however, continued to assert his authority and persisted in hearing Sharif's
case.[85] On 30
November 1997, while the hearing was in progress, Sharif's cabinet ministers
and a large number of his supporters entered the Supreme Court building,
disrupting the proceedings.[85] The chief
justice asked the military to send the military police, and subsequently struck
down the Thirteenth (XIII) Amendment thereby restoring the power of the president.[85] But, this
move back fired on the chief justice when the military backed the prime
minister and refused to obey the president's orders to remove Sharif.[85] The prime
minister forced President Farooq
Leghari to resign,
and appointed Wasim
Sajjad as acting
president.[85] After the
president's removal, Sharif ousted Chief Justice Sajad Ali Shah to end the
constitutional crisis once and for all.[85]”
This created severe sense of insecurity among the judges.
However, a couple of years later when Mr. Sharif tried to
stage a coup against his own appointed COAS and CJCOSC Gen. Pervez Musharraf
while he was on a flight back from Sri Lanka, the army turned against him and
not only staged a counter coup but also tried him for attempted hijacking of
Musharraf’s plane and sentenced him to death.
The judiciary took a sigh of relief and when Gen. Musharraf
sought their blessing for a plan to rule the country for three years as
military dictator keeping the constitution suspended, they willingly gave him a
free hand which helped him to remain president until 2008. Looking back, it
seems that Gen. Musharraf was not as brave or as smart as he thought himself to
be. When asked by the Saudi King he surrendered Nawaz Sharif on condition that
he would not interfere in Pakistani politics for 10 years.
In 2007 he was outwitted by Benazir Bhutto who after making a
deal with the Americans that they would be allowed to bring personnel and
equipment and have the use of Shamsi airbase to carry out drone attacks within
Pakistan, promised to let him remain president if she was allowed to return to Pakistan
and contest and win the elections in 2008. Nawaz Sharif was also allowed to
return prematurely and his main function was to lead all honest and patriotic
parties away from the election.
The 2013 general elections though certified by everyone to
have been free and fair were actually heavily rigged. The rigging mainly took
place in the secluded women’s polling centers. With poor security, weak
administration and low turnover, these polling stations that were not very
strictly monitored, provided ideal opportunity for bogus voting. In fact,
Khwaja Rafique was caught on camera casting bogus votes in a women’s booth.
As of now both PMLN and PPP are anti-army, anti-judiciary and
mired in corruption. It is imperative that a third political party with clean
and patriotic leaders forms government in the next general elections which need
to be really fair. To achieve this Imran Khan needs to recruit and train at
least two polling agents for each polling booth in every constituency. Women
polling agents need special training and should be in adequate numbers to
ensure that rigging is prevented. Imran Khan also needs to have support of
local vernacular TV and radio channels that have a lot of weight in forming
public opinion in rural areas.
