Opinion - Leader Page Articles   

Pakistan civil society takes on mission impossible

In January 2000, Pervez Musharraf, then the country’s army chief and chief executive, carried out his first purge of the Supreme Court, three months after ousting the Nawaz Sharif-led government. Nasir Aslam Zahid was one of the six judges dismissed from service for refusing to be sworn in under his first provisional constitutional order.

In a conversation with The Hindu in July this year, days after the reinstatement of Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Justice (retd.) Zahid drew a contrast between the new breeze blowing through the Supreme Court with his own experience. He recalled how he went to the court that day hoping to convince his brother judges not to keel over, and spoke of how he felt “completely isolated” when he discovered that several of them had already taken a fresh oath on the general’s orders, under the PCO.

“I just got into my car and came back. There were no protesting lawyers outside the court, no people shouting slogans in our support,” Mr. Zahid said.

Seven years later, as deposed Chief Justice Chaudhry and other judges who refused to take the PCO oath in the latest Supreme Court purge spend a sixth week under virtual house arrest, lonely they may be, denied as they are any visitors save those approved by the government. But isolated they certainly are not.

Since November 3, when President Musharraf imposed emergency rule and ousted the judges, a small but vociferous movement led by the legal community, and Pakistan’s intelligentsia have managed to keep the issue of their reinstatement in the centre-stage of the national debate.

Most analysts have already given up the deposed judiciary as a lost cause. Gen. Musharraf has already ruled it out several times, accusing Mr. Chaudhry of implementing a “well thought-out conspiracy” against his plans for a transition to democracy. But unlike in 2000 or on earlier occasions, sections of Pakistanis — mostly city-dwelling and educated — are simply unwilling to accept the assault on the judiciary. On the one hand is the legal community, which has kept up an agitation across the country with protest rallies in one or another city every day. Despite the continued detention of their leadership in the Supreme Court Bar Association, the lawyers have managed a near-total boycott of the higher courts since the November 3 imposition of the emergency. The four high courts and the Supreme Court are deserted with lawyers refusing to take their clients to the “PCO judges.”

“How can I assure my clients that I will be able to get them justice from people who I could never address as M’Lord? These PCO judges are wearing a military uniform under their robes. It would have been better if Musharraf saab had appointed soldiers in their place, then we could have dropped the pretence and addressed them directly as Mr. Colonel or Mr. Major,” Asma Jehangir, the noted human rights lawyer, said at a recent public meeting in Islamabad.

Then there is Pakistan’s civil society. In Islamabad, there are near-daily citizens’ rallies to the deposed judges’ homes, with the participants — lawyers and retired judges, school children, college students, academics, teachers, human rights activists, newspaper columnists, journalists, and even housewives — carrying flowers for Mr. Chaudhry and the other judges, elaborately handing them over to the policemen who stop the rallies midway.

“We are seeing a new social movement. These are the middle classes that Musharraf has been so proud of. He always says that under him, the middle class expanded. And these are the same people out on the streets today asking for rule of law and democratic development,” said Sarwar Bari, who is with an NGO for free and fair elections, and a regular at all the protests.

Last week, volunteers gathered outside the home of a sacked judge of the Lahore High Court who was asked to move out of his official accommodation to reassure him that he was not alone in his time of trouble. There have been vigils for Aitzaz Ahsan, the SCBA president who is under house arrest, and Muneer Malik outside the hospital where he was rushed when his health deteriorated.

Pakistan has never heard of such things before. But nor have judges ever been detained before. Another reason for this unprecedented movement is the explosion of Constitution consciousness in the wake of an urban street agitation by lawyers across Pakistan through the first half of the year, and the detailed media coverage, especially on television, of the issues involved until it all went off the air.

The phrase “rule of law” now trips off the tongue of a teenage school student in Islamabad or Lahore as easily as it does for a greying lawyer in a black suit.

However, this is no mass movement of people. The numbers that turn up for these demonstrations and vigils are what reporters would describe as “dozens” rather than “hundreds” or even “scores.” But what they lack in numerical strength they seem to have made up for by sheer persistence so much so that the reinstatement of the deposed judges is the big issue in Pakistan today, forcing opposition political parties to come clean on where they stand on it.

The campaigners were hoping that all opposition parties would join hands and make the reinstatement of the judges the single condition for their participation in the January 8 election, on the argument that free and fair elections are impossible under a stacked judiciary. They managed to put enough pressure on the political parties to consider the idea, even if only briefly.

Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (N), at first took the “principled” position that he would boycott elections if the judges were not restored but changed it as party pressure to contest grew. Benazir Bhutto, who once marched up to the barricades outside the judges’ homes and declared Mr. Chaudhry as the “real chief justice,” later toned down her stand to a more general one about the importance of an “independent judiciary” than of “personalities.”

In his defence, Mr. Sharif pointed to Ms Bhutto, who was clear that the Pakistan People’s Party would contest the elections, even if she feared they would be rigged. The alternative, according to her, would be to “leave the field open” for pro-Musharraf political allies to walk all over. As the leader of the other big opposition party, Mr. Sharif said he could not be left out but he has said the restoration of the dismissed judges remains his “first priority.”

While the opposition’s decision to contest elections was a letdown for the lawyers and civil society, it has not destroyed their agitation. “We are going to stick by our demand, and our single demand is the restoration of the judiciary. Everything else will fall into place once this demand is met,” said Ghazala Minallah, wife of a prominent Supreme Court lawyer, as she participated in a protest on December 10, a day after Mr. Sharif announced his party’s decision to contest the elections.

Those in the forefront of the agitation are confident that no political party, whether in government or opposition, can overlook the demand for the reinstatement of the judges. They believe that both before and after the elections, the handful of political parties that have decided not to participate in the elections — such as Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and the Jamat-i-Islami — will join the movement, adding to the pressure on the political parties in the next Parliament.

“One day they have to let the Chief Justice roam freely, one day Aitzaz Ahsan is going to come out. That’s going to have its own effect. There is the new phenomenon of students taking part [in these protests]. These people are not going to dig a hole and disappear into it. The demand for the reinstatement of the judges will remain even after the election,” said Asim Sajjad who teaches at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, a key centre of anti-Musharraf protests.

Wearing the dual and somewhat clashing hats of a PPP candidate from a Lahore constituency and the Supreme Court Bar Association president, Mr. Ahsan recently attempted to steer a middle-path through the judges’ cause and his political compulsions.

In an open letter to lawyers, he urged them not to slow down their agitation even if political parties backed out of their boycott threat and decided to contest the elections. Instead, he proposed that to ensure the reinstatement of the judiciary was the “primary issue in the elections,” bar associations across the country must get all candidates to take an oath that if elected they would work to bring back the ousted judges.

But it is his idea of a “judicial bus” — going on a countrywide road tour with the sacked judges to mobilise support for their reinstatement — after the elections, just as he drove Mr. Chaudhry around the country between April and July, that has fired the imagination of lawyers and civil society. One ousted judge declared from his house arrest that he would be among the first aboard the proposed bus.

More than anything else, though, the main motivation for the legal community and civil society is Mr. Chaudhry himself, and his defiance of Gen. Musharraf, the day the Pakistan President removed him for the first time on March 9. Many thought then it was mission impossible to have him reinstated. He was, and Pakistan’s civil society, now in the throes of a sequel, is taking inspiration from that.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Significant move on political chessboard
Banking perspectives
Pakistan civil society takes on mission impossible
Inadequate judge strength is glaring
Iraq: U.S. and Iran must seek deal
Humans still evolving and faster than ever
Corrections and clarifications
PM candidate Advani
Gujarat polls
Caring for the old

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu