What, in God’s name, is the prime minister up to? Ms Bhutto filed a Presidential Reference before the Supreme Court without showing it to President Farooq Leghari or getting him to sign it. Then she presented a Review Petition to the SC and immediately sought an adjournment. When the SC refused the request, Ms Bhutto’s lawyers asked Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah to remove himself from the bench and reconstitute it afresh. When permission was denied, Ms Bhutto “withdrew” the Petition in a huff. In the meanwhile, the PM has negated the SC’s decision to restore the local bodies in the Punjab by hurriedly repealing the provincial law on which the court’s judgment was based.
Ms Bhutto’s conduct is, to say the least, quite bizarre. She has registered a vote of no-confidence in the highest organ of state power in the country. All that now remains is for her to refuse to comply, on one pretext or another, with the SC’s order dismissing 19 high court judges appointed by her government last year. Can this crisis be resolved in any way now?
Conventional political wisdom would suggest that when the government and the supreme court disagree so radically over the interpretation of the constitution and the writ of the SC is not acceptable to the executive, the government should resign and seek a fresh mandate from the people to amend the constitution in a clear cut manner. Alternatively, the SC can order any organ of the state, including the President and the armed forces, to enforce its writ, by force if necessary.
These options are, for obvious reasons, not likely to be chosen by either side in a hurry. Instead, the game may be prolonged in a particularly nasty fashion in the months ahead. Consider.
Mr Manzoor Wattoo’s lawyers are expected to put up a determined bid to restore him to power. It may be argued, for instance, that Mr Wattoo could not validly have been asked to counter a vote of no-confidence last September because the Presidential Proclamation under article 234 had effectively dislodged him as chief minister at the time. The court could therefore ask Mr Wattoo to take a fresh oath of office as chief minister and give him 60 days in which to prove his majority. If that happens, it is not beyond the wiles of Mr Wattoo to gang up with Mr Nawaz Sharif and initiate proceedings for an in-House change in Islamabad.
In the meanwhile, fresh trouble may be break out on the Local Bodies front in the Punjab. The new law in the Punjab Assembly, which repeals the Local Bodies Ordinance of 1979, is so carelessly drafted and so full of legal holes that it could easily be struck down as unconstitutional. That would lead to a rout of the PDF in Punjab.
The shadow of Mehran Bank also hovers over Mr Aftab Sherpao’s government in the NWFP. An affidavit by Mr Kidwai, the former Mehran bank chief in the NWFP who is now in exile in London, may be presented to the courts soon. The affidavit alleges that Mr Asif Zardari, Mr Aftab Sherpao and Mr Saleem Saifullah, among others, were recipients of huge sums of money for purposes of horsetrading in 1994. The courts had earlier refused to admit the affidavit because it hadn’t been authenticated by the Pakistan High Commission in London. The authentication has apparently now been confirmed by an office of the Commonwealth, and the ANP is poised to present the affidavit to the courts in the NWFP or directly to the SC, if necessary. Once the two opposition governments are installed in the two provinces, the action may shift to Islamabad.
The anti-Bhutto forces are wary of taking the same route to fresh elections which Ms Bhutto took in 1993. The fear is that by pitting the power of the street against the power of the federal government, via a long march from Lahore and Peshawar to besiege Islamabad, the opposition could seriously imperil the political system and provoke an extra-constitutional intervention. Instead, efforts may be made to initiate an in-House change which paves the way for elections next year.
Ms Bhutto has suddenly woken up to Mir Murtaza Bhutto’s existence. But she needs to fulfill four major conditions in order to save her soul. One, she must banish Mr Zardari to Nawabshah or Surrey and order him to keep his head down. Two, she must beg Justice Shah’s forgiveness. Three, she must hand over control of the economy, and the finance institutions, to President Farooq Leghari so that he can stop it from leaking like a sieve and get things done. Four, she must concede fresh general elections, before the Senate elections next March, under a neutral interim government.
Ms Bhutto’s fatal flaw lies in alienating the President and the CJ — once staunch loyalists — and creating a new troika. If she continues on her reckless path of confrontation, she is eventually bound to nudge the linchpin of the old troika — the COAS –into standing up and being counted along with his state colleagues.