Mubarak’s trial

Pakistan has often looked to the Middle East for inspiration and it has brought us nothing but misery. Now, though, with the coming of the Arab Spring, we can finally learn lessons of the right kind: How to hold kleptocrat rulers accountable. Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak will be brought to trial for killing unarmed protesters and for corruption during his long regime. The trial will take place under the watchful eye of the Egyptian military, which has so far shown a propensity for neutrality, which should mitigate fears that Mubarak will be a victim of ‘victor’s justice’.

We have been through many such cycles of accountability but all have been marred by the motives of the governments in power at the time. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was given the death penalty in a farcical trial manipulated by the man who ousted him from power. Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif took turns at putting each other in the dock while Pervez Musharraf targeted both of them. Many of the leaders may indeed have been guilty of the crimes of which they were accused but the partisan nature with which their cases were dealt with left the sense that the purpose of justice was not served. Mubarak’s trial, if it avoids all the shortcomings that have plagued accountability in Pakistan, could serve as a model, not just for us but for the entire Arab world as it undergoes its democratic transformation.

The responsibility of the Egyptian military, however, does not end with Mubarak’s trial. Already, the forces of democratisation are critical of the military for tarrying in the holding of elections and handing over power to civilian representatives. Accountability has to be accompanied by accomplishment, a lesson Pakistan’s military dictators and power-hungry politicians never learned. Mubarak’s trial will be a great symbolic display of the new Egypt but it has to be accompanied by more substantive reforms. Only then will Egypt be an inspiration to the world.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 28^th, 2011.