President Ishaq’s new cabinet is a sight for sore eyes. As one sitting caretaker minister laughingly admits, “This is a genuine broad-based government!”. But why did the President have to pack it with sons, sons-in-law, husbands and sisters of brothers-in-law? Why were so many unsavoury people included in it? The idea of a “national” government is a non-starter. Half the current ministers are publicly demanding the dismissal of the provincial governments while the others are secretly jockeying to retain them. The information minister says that the army cannot possibly conduct the elections even as his colleagues are insisting upon it. The prime minister says there will be no witch-hunts against Mr Nawaz Sharif & Co. But the Labour Minister, who heads the Accountability Committee, is spitting fire and vowing to drown members of the deposed government in hundreds of “cases”. We even have a parliamentary affairs minister to look after a non-existent parliament!
Or look at Mr Manzoor Wattoo’s antics in the Punjab. In the old days, horses were herded to Changa Manga or flown to Saidu Sharif. These days donkeys fly to Islamabad and graze at the PC in Bhurban. In the old days, MPs would shout “Go Baba, Go”. These days they uproot microphones, hurl chairs and beat each other up in full public view. In the old days, IGs and DIGs were supposed to obey MPs, these days they buy and sell them. If all this isn’t a mockery of “democracy”, we don’t know what is.
In Sindh the situation is really bad. Azeem Tariq has been assassinated, Karachi is gripped with fear and uncertainty. The PPP is threatening to resign en masse from the assembly. The MQM (Altaf) has boycotted the bye-elections. The Supreme Court is still mulling over the fate of a couple of seats. The army has launched a fresh clean-up operation. The royal farce was complete after Mr Asif Zardari jetted to Nawabshah in a WAPDA plane to hustle votes for the PPP candidate.
The Frontier and Balochistan assemblies are choc-a-bloc with drug warlords. The Balochistan chief minister gave an interview to “Dawn” some months ago and called for martial law. Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s JUI, which controls the Balochistan assembly, has formally demanded the dissolution of all the assemblies. As for the redoubtable Mir Afzal of the Frontier, we cannot understand why he has lugged all his MPs to Islamabad if he is still interested in running his House.
It seems that, despite their public pronouncements, no one is interested in resigning from the provincial assemblies and calling it a day until the Supreme Court has announced the fate of the national assembly. If it upholds the President’s dissolution order, everyone will trip over themselves to resign and disband the assemblies. If it doesn’t, anything can happen. Anything.
Unfortunately, the confusion is compounded in the courts of law. There is much uncertainty about what the judges are saying, what they mean and what they will do. There are six petitions challenging the dissolution order pending in the High Courts. The Lahore High Court has now said it will wait for the Supreme Court to decide whether it will admit Mr Sharif’s writ or not. If it does, all the High Court writs will be transferred to the Supreme Court and formal hearings will begin sometime later in the month. If it doesn’t, all the writs may be combined before the Lahore High Court. An idea of the state of mind of judges of the Lahore High Court, however, can be gauged from snippets of commentary in the Court on Monday 3rd May:
Akram Sheikh (Counsel for petitioner Gauhar Ayub): “Supreme Court judges are not answerable to anybody but Almighty Allah.”
Chief Justice Mehboob: “Don’t go to such extremes and bring Allah into it…We are human beings…”
Justice Irshad Hasan: “We are answerable to the people and intend to tell them that we don’t want to cause any delay in deciding the case”.
Chief Justice Mehboob: “We are not answerable to the people. We have to decide matters in accordance with law”.
Justice Irshad Hasan: “That was my personal (sic) opinion only”.
Only two other sordid facts remain to be noted. (1) The Attorney General of Pakistan has filed in the Lahore High Court a 2500 page report of arguments in support of the dissolution. The report contains newspaper clippings of a story detailing a land scam in which the chief justice of the Lahore High Court, Justice Mehboob, was allegedly involved. Question: will the CJ have to debar himself from hearing the case? (2) The Peshawar High Court has ordered Mr Nawaz Sharif to appear before it to explain why he disobeyed its order staying any meeting of the Muslim League to elect its president. Next question: will Mr Sharif be convicted of contempt of court?
The President can still redeem the situation. He should send the assemblies home, fire the cabinet and install 10 clean ministers and four governors who will not contest the elections. Then he should call in the army to help conduct the elections and let the people have the final say.