It is always timing that is questioned, not substance
Umer Cheema

As proved again after the Supreme Court’s direction of arresting all those accused in the Rental Power Projects (RPPs) case, including Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, different conspiracy theories have emerged to divert attention from the key issue.
This has been a standard practice over the period whether it is the memo-gate, NRO case, fake degree and dual nationality debate or tax evasion report. Every time, the timing is questioned of the occurrences exposing either to the government or the parliamentarians or both. Nobody has the stomach to digest the criticism and fix the wrongs. Rather, distraction in the name of democracy is considered the easy way to move forward.
After Tuesday’s announcement of the court’s decision, hardly anybody cared to criticise NAB and the government for delaying the implementation of the SC’s judgment that was handed down some six months ago and before the election of Raja Pervaiz Ashraf as prime minister. Instead, the PPP and its apologists started gunning at the court and gave the impression as if the SC was part of a ‘grand conspiracy plan’ against the government. These attacks started just a week after the politicians across the divide had declared the chief justice as ‘protector of democracy’.
They started questioning the timing of the SC order, coinciding as it is with Dr Tahirul Qadri’s demand of sending the rulers home and dissolution of the Assemblies. Chronic critics of the court hardly gave a thought to the remarks of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry Tuesday morning during the hearing of a case wherein he said the SC won’t care who was doing what in Islamabad but elections would be held on time. His remarks were in oblique reference to Dr Qadri’s long march.
Addressing the Lahore Bar Association on January 6, the chief justice literally gave a shut-up call to all those thinking of ruling Pakistan through un-elected means. PPP’s Secretary General Jehangir Badr was among those praising the chief justice for this statement.
Every decision of the judiciary is greeted with scepticism whereas the benefit of doubt is given to the PPP government that portrays itself as victim while being in power.
Earlier, the judiciary was criticised for not hearing the Asghar Khan case but when the decision was announced which was a damning indictment of a former army chief and a former DG ISI, the PPP government, which always claimed to anti-establishment, didn’t initiate any proceedings against them. Even during the course of the hearing of the case, the PPP was reluctant to produce notification issued by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto for setting up of a political cell in the ISI.
Before that, the judiciary set a precedence by putting the ISI on the mat in the abduction of 11 prisoners from Adiala Jail. In PPP’s five-year term, no serious effort was made to make any law for bringing all agencies under the Act of Parliament. Instead, President’s spokesman Senator Farhatullah Babar withdrew a bill in this respect earlier tabled in the Senate. Likewise, the Abbottabad Commission report has also been swept under the carpet.
As for as the conspiracy theories are concerned, the government’s position was not different when hearing was conducted to implement the SC’s decision on the NRO. Likewise, the government and Parliament joined hands on the issues of fake degree and dual citizenship.
It was being said that parliamentarians are being defamed to weaken democracy. When JUI-F leadership was exposed after a land scam, as it had managed to get allotted the land reserved for the martyred soldiers, the author of the report, Ansar Abbasi, was declared as the ‘agent of Jews.’
Recently, when the Centre for Investigative Reporting in Pakistan (CIRP) discovered that two-third of sitting parliamentarians are tax-evaders the politicians across the divide blasted the report. Instead of contesting the contents of the report, they started questioning the timing of the report to give an impression that it had been launched to defame the politicians at the time of elections.