SC judgement on NRO

Ever since it has been reinstated, the Supreme Court has been on a mission to scrap the NRO.

Ever since it has been reinstated, the Supreme Court has been on a mission to scrap the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), passed by Pervez Musharraf in the twilight of his rule and supported by a PPP that accrued the most benefit from its general amnesty to the political class. Now that a full 17-member bench of the Supreme Court has rejected the government’s plea that the court should review its original verdict striking down the NRO as unconstitutional, we can finally put this remnant of Musharraf’s dictatorship behind us. The Supreme Court, it must be said, has dealt with the NRO case in a mature manner. When the court originally began hearing the case, many feared that it would use this as an excuse to get rid of the government and force all its officials, including President Asif Ali Zardari, to face trial. That has not been the case at all.

President Zardari has been protected so far by the immunity he receives from his office. But now that the NRO has finally been relegated to the trash can of history, the president can be prosecuted once he leaves office. The same is true of other politicians from the PPP, the MQM and the ANP, although the number is far smaller than earlier imagined. Now that it’s been two years since the Supreme Court ruled on the illegality of the NRO, and has since upheld that verdict, the one thing we can safely say is that those who benefited from the NRO were incorrect in claiming that the skies would fall and democracy destroyed if the NRO wasn’t upheld. Self-interest spurred their fears, not a fear for the health of democracy.

Although the PPP is now indelibly associated with the NRO, one must remember that it was one of the final actions of a desperate dictator, trying to cling on to power for as long as he could. The PPP passed the 18^th Amendment to the constitution to remove many of Musharraf’s dictatorial laws. By ruling against the NRO, the Supreme Court has done the same. The process may have been dragged out but we should be glad that the country can now move on from those undemocratic years.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 26^th, 2011.