The confrontation between the judiciary and the executive is turning nasty. On June 26th, after waiting nearly two years for the Punjab government to fulfill its promises to hold elections to the local bodies, the supreme court (SC) finally acted to restore Punjab’s 1993 councillors back to power. The next day, the PM whipped her Punjab MPAs into line and contemptuously threw out the local bodies law. No law, no judgment, Ms Bhutto seemed to crow, the SC could go jump in a lake for all she cared. A couple of days later, the PM made the astounding charge that the opposition was trying to induce the judiciary to throw her out of office by tempting a few judges with offers of prime ministership and chief ministership.
Ms Bhutto is in a spiteful, unrepentant mood. Since the SC adjudged many of her judicial appointments to be illegal, she has stormed into the Presidency time and again to insist that President Farooq Leghari should immediately fire (‘de-notify’) CJ Sajjad Ali Shah. Thus far, fortunately, President Leghari has refused to heed her advice. If the PM is bent upon committing hara-kiri and taking the system down with her, he seems to be saying, he will have no part of it.
President Leghari, it is learnt, does not entirely approve of the SC’s judgment in the “judges case”. Indeed, he is thought to believe that the SC court has gone beyond its constitutional jurisdiction by assuming a veto power over the matter of the appointment, transfer and promotion of senior judges. But President Leghari cannot be unaware of the facts which have triggered such a heavy-handed response from the judiciary. The spirit of the constitution, which envisages meaningful consultation between the CJ and the PM over such matters, was blatantly violated by Ms Bhutto. The personal undertones which have crept into the conflict are also known to everyone. Therefore, in the interest of political stability, Mr Leghari has tried to cool down tempers on both sides and build bridges between the PM and the CJ.
But Ms Bhutto is in no mood to listen to President Leghari. In fact, she went so far as to belittle him by filing a rude reference to the SC on his behalf without even showing him the draft for approval.
This is not the first time President Leghari has given good advice to the PM and been snubbed for his pains. He has told her countless times to run a clean and efficient ship. He has begged her to fire all the corrupt and inefficient bureaucrats who are leading her, and the country, to the precipice of disaster. He has tried to stop her from committing the government to some highly suspect deals. And he has made no bones about his view that the prime minister’s husband should keep a low profile and not interfere in the running of government. But the PM has turned a deaf ear to all his pleas. Thus has the dangerous deadlock between Ms Bhutto and Justice Sajjad Ali Shah led to a widening gulf between Ms Bhutto and Mr Leghari. The tragedy is that even as he discreetly tries to rein in the PM, Mr Leghari is fast losing credibility as a neutral president.
Mr Farooq Leghari is impaled on the horns of a dilemma — if he publicly censures Ms Bhutto, he imperils a long-standing relationship; if he doesn’t, he risks undermining the trust and responsibility reposed in the office of the President by the people of Pakistan.
It cannot be easy for Mr Leghari to show his displeasure against Ms Bhutto in public. He was her loyal deputy for 17 years and owes her for elevating him to the Presidency. He is also on record for opposing an interventionist Presidency which exploits the 8th amendment. It is also conceivable that Mr Leghari may hold the opinion that the options to Ms Bhutto — Nawaz Sharif, Imran Khan, the ‘Babas’ or, indeed, the khakis — are no options at all. What, then, should he do?
If Mr Leghari’s public silence is predicated on such personal and political considerations, he should consider the other side of the coin. If he is honest to himself and to the nation he heads, Mr Leghari must realise that he owes immeasurably more to the office he occupies than to the person who put him there. He should also know that time and tide wait for no man. The longer he condones, or appears to condone, Ms Bhutto’s rash and unacceptably autocratic and corrupt behaviour, the more he risks being ignominiously sidelined along with her in the future. Indeed, unless Mr Leghari is also cut from the same cloth as the rest of the servile bunch around Ms Bhutto, the President must stand up and be counted. Now.
It is really quite simple. The prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, is leading this country to constitutional chaos and administrative mayhem. The President, Farooq Leghari, must stop her from doing so.