Supreme Court holds the key
December 25th, 2011
Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani said on December 23 that there would be no takeover of the government through a coup d’état, calling all speculation about it “misleading” rumours aimed at diverting ‘focus from the real issues at hand’. This was his answer to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s statement that there was conspiracy afoot to get rid of his government. He had also made an oblique reference to the army making an issue out of the ‘memorandum’ issue. General Kayani, however, insisted that issues of national security had to be handled on merit, which confirmed that he was not about to let the PPP government off the hook from the memogate case being heard at the Supreme Court. The PPP assembled its core committee to deliver its own rejoinder to General Kayani, warning that institutions of the state should not trespass into one another’s domain. Here is the concealed objection to the Supreme Court and the army interfering in the work of the executive. The army chief’s statement, taken together with Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry’s clearly expressed opposition to any coup by the army, has been welcomed by the opposition parties and the media discussants. For the PPP, however, all these are interested parties who want to see the back of the government sooner — deemed against the Constitution — rather than later, which would be some time in 2013 through a general election.
If one reads between the lines, it could be a case of the military seeming to be relying on the honourable court to do what most people in Pakistan, apart from the PPP and its coalition partners, want: removal of the government one way or another. The Supreme Court is the linchpin in this and the entire nation thinks that an activist Supreme Court is actually an independent Supreme Court, apart from the lawyers’ community that appears at the apex court and thinks — through its annual election of the Supreme Court Bar Association — that an activist Supreme Court is also obliged to exercise judicial restraint. Of course, in this is lost the debate over who should invoke the national interest. The army chief seems to have done it but surely it is in the nation’s interest that its Constitution be paramount and all institutions abide by its dictates.
Chief Justice Chaudhry has already given us a glimpse of what will happen if President Zardari is impugned: if the government thinks that the president is immune from litigation under Article 248 of the Constitution, it should come before the court and ask for this immunity. Although some eminent lawyers like Aitzaz Ahsan think that the presidential immunity is blanket, many others don’t agree. They say that: ‘Article 248 gives protection to acts done in good faith and cannot be construed to extend blanket cover for unlawful and unconstitutional acts. It is more or less certain that if presidential immunity is sought it will be refused and President Zardari may be ‘impleaded’. If he is found involved in the memo case, the court may direct the state under another article to carry out its orders after the negative verdict. If that were to happen, there will be a moment of decision for the army chief: will he leave the executive under which he functions to carry out the order, or will he pressure the government to leave, or will he do nothing? Of course, if the PPP led government is bundled off this way, it will emerge as a martyr.
Had the Supreme Court wished, it could do a bit of the suo motu thing and pause on the federal affidavit lying with it saying the federal government had no control of the army and the ISI. The Constitution does not accept that the army should de facto or de jure be exempt from the writ of the popularly elected executive. The opposition headed by the PML-N knows full well what is meant by the content of the affidavit because it was toppled in 1999 after a disagreement with the army chief over foreign policy. But it will not react because it is the PPP that is losing this time. No one can deny today that the army still runs the country’s foreign policy, joint resolutions by parliament notwithstanding. The national consensus against the PPP defies the rule of majority embedded in the Constitution.
An endangered minority
December 25th, 2011
Given the scope of problems facing the people of Balochistan, from a security establishment that abducts at will anyone it considers a threat to chronic underdevelopment, the plight of the Hindu community in the province has not been given the attention it deserves. Estimated to number about 200,000, Hindus in Balochistan have been the victims of a campaign of kidnappings and killings that is causing them to flee the province en masse. The most recent incident involved the killing of a young Hindu trader, Ravi Kumar, after his family could not rustle up the one-million-rupee ransom that his kidnappers had demanded. The Hindu community is alive to the threat it faces and has taken out a protest in front of the Balochistan Assembly demanding protection from the government. It is now time that the authorities start to treat the problem with some amount of seriousness.
A report released by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in September of this year, revealed that over 50 members of the Hindu community have been kidnapped for ransom in the last three years, many of whom have been killed if the money is not paid. There is no evidence that the provincial government has been complicit in this assault on Hindus but it is surely guilty of negligence. According to the report, families of victims are fearful of reporting the crimes to the police because they have no confidence in the authorities and rather are fearful that it will only make it harder to recover their loved ones. So fraught is the situation that more than 100 Hindu families have migrated from Balochistan and are seeking refuge in other countries.
What makes the crimes against the Hindu community even more disturbing is that Balochistan has a rich Hindu heritage and, until recently, was thought to be a more hospitable environment for the community than anywhere else in the country. Hindu pilgrims from India make the annual trek to the Makran coast for a four-day ritual at the Hinglaj Mata temple, where Hindus believe that the head of their goddess Sati had fallen, and these pilgrimages have been taking place for decades without incident. But as more Hindus flee Balochistan, the province’s Hindu heritage is sure to suffer from neglect and a lack of interest.