Despite warnings from the judiciary, Mian Nawaz Sharif has pushed his Anti-Terrorist Act through parliament. Islamabad verily rumbled as the law minister, Mr Khalid Anwar, wrote up its draconian sections. Editorials warning Mian Sahib against setting up kangaroo courts to compensate for the incompetence of the executive have been to no avail. The fat is now in the fire.
The police had complained that the courts were quick to grant bail to felons apprehended at great risk to life and limb. The new law therefore denies bail after arrest and trials will take no more than 21 days from investigation to conviction. Confessions, even those extracted under duress, will suffice for stiff sentences. The special courts will be set up with judges chosen from the community of senior lawyers and sitting or retired judges with clearance, thank God, from the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Appeals will lie with special appellate judges who will finalise the hearing within one week. Will such courts work efficiently and fairly?
Information minister Mushahid Hussain’s gaffe on the BBC, that the Act was like India’s TADA, hasn’t helped the prime minister’s cause. TADA, as everyone knows, was used to victimise innocent people and did not succeed in curbing terrorism. The PPP opposition walked out of parliament during the vote; the MQM absented itself from the proceedings while the ANP voted in favour without expressing supportive opinion.
Objections to the special courts are based on past experience. They were earlier dismissed by the Supreme Court after it was discovered that the police and the lawyers were in cahoots with the judges for graft. The other scary element was the police. The Punjab chief minister, Mian Shahbaz Sharif, has accused them publicly of being involved in crime. The criminalisation of the police is directly traced on the spoils system practised by politicians in power. Recruitments at the level of the ASI have largely been ‘sifarish-based and none so as blatantly as under Mian Sahib’s tenure as chief minister of the Punjab 1988-90.
To be fair to the government, however, the sectarian problem in Pakistan has now snowballed to such a scale that some sort of special dispensation to crush it could not have been easily avoided. Those who object to the special courts might remember that the alternative would have been to sanction “extra-judicial” killings as in Karachi under the PPP in 1994-96. and “police encounters” as in Punjab under the IJI in 1988-90. In both instances, the people’s adherence of such tactics was tempered by the government’s “success” in restoring a semblance of “peace”. Everyone knows that the system is seriously infected, that it is highly vulnerable to the creed of the sectarian or ethnic killer with his total ability to black-mail the citizenry through life-threats and even assassinations. The judiciary’s recommendation that terrorism should be dealt within the normal courts is also faced with a credibility problem. The chief justices admit that the magistracy is thoroughly corrupt and is in need of reform, that procedures in place for the promotion of good and honest judges are not scientifically framed.
It must also be admitted that Mr Sharif tried his best to persuade the chief justice of Pakistan to come up with a better and quicker option than the special courts. Unfortunately, the many meetings between the two of them in the last few weeks did not yield a better result. The chief justice’s solution, as laid out in the recent Law Commission Report, are focused on general, long-term requirements of legal reform rather than on urgent, short-term contingencies against the menace of violent terrorism. That may be why the ‘troika’ in Islamabad was forced to sit down and agree to give the Anti-Terrorist Act a fair trial. The army certainly would not have been too happy if it had been pushed into “law and order” duties under certain constitutional provisions available to the prime minister which would have enveloped Punjab and Sindh in a state of semi-martial law.
The jury is therefore bound to be out for some time to come over the legitimacy and necessity of the special courts. The bad news is that the opposition is ganging up against the government and its intentions are as ignoble as any opposition’s have ever been in this country. Mr Sharif’s reliance on a corrupt police force does not inspire confidence either. But the good news is that the Sharif brothers have already given evidence of personal involvement in the scrutiny of police action in the Punjab. the critical uproar from the press and human rights groups should also keep the executive on the straight and narrow.
Mr Sharif has embarked upon a politically controversial and technically flawed course. But he might have done worse by letting things be. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating of it. The supreme court must not rush into judgement and strike the new law down before the government has had a fair chance to make it work.