Whither Pakistan?

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 18^th 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.

The Great Bluff

As the judicial probe of impropriety against prime minister Nawaz Sharif approaches its logical conclusion, there is a crescendo of noises by the ruling party that the imminent disqualification of their leader would apply brakes to the wheels of progress in the country. It is true that the motorcade of the prime minister’s daughter has grown from 3 to 15 vehicles and some highly cosmetic infrastructure development projects have emerged in Lahore which are of little use to the general public. There has been no improvement in education, health or water, gas and power supplies services. Crimes are as prevalent, roads are as unsafe and jobs are as scarce as before the PML(N) government came into power.

Let us look at some of the statistics.

1.       Power Supply: The government has been claiming that there has been tremendous economic and industrial progress as in the following tweet of the Defense and Power minister:

If you add the average generation and shortfall you get the total electrical power demand for the year in question. Simple arithmetic giver the average demand figures as follows:

Year                                         June 2012            June 2013            June 2016            June 2017

Total Power Demand               17070                   19742                 19684                  20841

This shows that there has been a growth of only 5.57 percent in 4 years ie less than 1.4 % annually which is even less than population growth rate. Thus there has been no growth in either industry or people’s standard of living. Actually there has been perceptible deterioration.

2.       Trade: The following trade data has been taken from the government website and tells a sad story of the utter failure of the businessman prime minister:

There has been a steady fall in the volume and value of exports over the last 4 year period and the government has done nothing to arrest the decline.  The textile and garment manufacturers have been running from pillar to post but have not had any success.

3.       Stock Exchange:  The success of Karachi Stock Exchange now Pakistan Stock Exchange has been told as the great achievement of the incumbent government. Here is the 5 year progress report taken from their own website:

Above chart shows that although the 100 index has been blown out of proportion, the number of listed companies has remained stagnant and a meager increase in base capital has taken place. The only IPO in 2017 so far was for an iron works owned by Sharif family.  During this period there have been about half a dozen upheaval and mini-crashes in which more than 4% market capitalization was lost in one day causing heavy losses to small investors.

4.       Currency Parity: When the present govt. came to power in 2013, the PKR-USD parity stood at Rs. 108. Mr. Dar played some quick tricks and brought it down to Rs.98 and touted it as a financial miracle. Soon afterwards heavy borrowings were made from WB and others and the parity was maintained at on average at Rs. 104 against the demands of exporters. Recently it jumped back to Rs. 108 and SBP declared that it reflects the current economic situation. The result of maintaining low parity is that Pakistani families that depend on remittances from family members working abroad have lost nearly 400 billion rupees in money exchange and textile and garments have become uncompetitive and reduced production and cut jobs. The only beneficiaries of this policy are those who have been sending their money abroad for buying properties in Dubai, Qatar and UK etc as they got more dollars for their Rupees.  It has also helped to show higher GDP in dollar terms to fool the world.

If one takes all above facts into consideration, it seems that the government of Mr. Nawaz Sharif has been working intentionally to harm national interests and the people of Pakistan. Take into account the Dawn story plant against the armed forces, the tirades against the judiciary and the family friendship with pm Modi and other Indians with deteriorating border situation and silence on the arrest of Indian terror mastermind one can’t help but wonder if the stage is being set for something like the French Revolution.

Swift justice and early elections may avert a disaster, I hope and pray.

..

Submission on Article 66.

To

Honorable Justice Asif Saeed Khosa,

Supreme Court of Pakistan,

Islamabad.

Sir,

After following the proceedings of the court on Panama Papers today, I feel compelled to seek your permission to make the following submissions of which the court would perhaps be already aware.

Article 66 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan reads as follows:

66. Privileges of members, etc.- (1) Subject to the Constitution and to the

rules of procedure of Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament), there shall be freedom of

speech in Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament) and no member shall be liable to any

proceedings in any court in respect of anything said or any vote given by him in

Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament), and no person shall be so liable in respect of the

publication by or under the authority of Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament) of any report,

paper, votes or proceedings.

The key words in this clause are “anything said or any vote given by him in

Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament),”

This provision of immunity has been made irrelevant by Article 63A inserted in the 18^th Amendment which reads as follows:

63A Disqualification on grounds of defection, etc.- (1) If a member of a Parliamentary Party composed of a single political party in a House-

(a) resigns from membership of his political party or joins another Parliamentary Party; or

(b) votes or abstains from voting in the House contrary to any direction issued by the

Parliamentary Party to which he belongs, in relations to-

(i) election of the Prime Minister or the Chief Minister; or

(ii) a vote of confidence or a vote of no-confidence; or

(iii) a Money Bill;

he may be declared in writing by the Head of the Parliamentary Party to have defected

from the political party, and the Head of the Parliamentary Party may forward a copy of the declaration to the Presiding Officer, and shall similarly forward a copy thereof to the

member concerned:

Provided that before making the declaration, the Head of the Parliamentary Party shall

provide such member with an opportunity to show cause as to why such declaration may not be made against him.

This clearly means that the vote cast or sound of Aay or Nay made by a member of the House is subject to proceeding in the court of the Head of the Parliamentary Party. There is no reason why a speech or statement should be exempted. In fact the stipulations of Article 63G should also be subject to scrutiny by a court of law.

Finally, Clause 63A (5) states as follows:

(5) Any party aggrieved by the decision of the Election Commission may within thirty days, prefer an appeal to the Supreme Court which shall decide the matter within three months from the date of the filing of the appeal.

This without doubt means that the Supreme Court of Pakistan is the final arbiter of the conduct of a member of any house of Parliament in Pakistan within the Parliament or outside.

Sent to: mail@supremecourt.gov.pk