High noon

NRO: Indeed, the next few weeks, or even days, could prove to be very eventful.

Once again, the civil-military crisis is upon us; and a government feels it is about to be ousted prematurely from power. The stage is set for it: the Supreme Court finds the government ultra vires of the law as constitutionally interpreted by it and has now said that it may, “to restore the delicately posed constitutional balance in accord with the norms of constitutional democracy”, take appropriate action and that such action it proposes may be “quite unpleasant”.

A 12-page order dated January 10 in a criminal appeal filed by Adnan A Khawaja reads like a damning indictment of the PPP-led government and the inability of it and its various organs and officers in defying the apex court’s verdict in various cases, especially the one relating to the NRO. A close reading of this order would convince most members of the PPP-led government that the time is not far when there will be some major change in the country’s current political structure and that the government’s refusal to implement the NRO may be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. At this point, questions may be asked — in all fairness — that how come the person in charge of the country at that time, a former army chief who usurped power and abrogated the Constitution after overthrowing a democratically-elected prime minister, is not being held to the same test. And why haven’t military dictators who have done far worse, been held to the same standard? Given the situation at present, one is not sure if any answers to these questions will be forthcoming from any quarter, but that doesn’t make them any less relevant.

The order lays out six options before the Supreme Court and the attorney-general has been asked to obtain replies of the president and the prime minister on these. One of the options, ominously, is that the president, prime minister and the law minister could all be disqualified from holding public office if they persist in refusing to implement the NRO verdict, which also requires, among other things, the federal government to write to a court in Switzerland and re-open cases of alleged corruption against President Asif Ali Zardari. The basis for this possibility is Article 5 and the order noted that the president and the prime minister, it appeared, seemed to be loyal not to the state but to a “political party” [Aristotle and a former judge of the US Supreme Court, Justice Louis Brandeis, are quoted at this point to indicate what happens when those in government break the law themselves]. The president, as well as the government, has already indicated that the holder of the post is provided immunity by the Constitution to which Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry had responded that if the president believes that he has immunity, he needs to claim it before the court. This comes a day after the state-owned APP news agency released remarks made by the prime minister to the Chinese newspaper People’s Daily Online where he said that the army chief and the ISI head had not been given approval by the ‘competent authorities’ before submitting their responses in the memogate case.

As far as the non-implementation of the NRO verdict is concerned, clearly the government should have made more of an effort to at least attempt to investigate officials whom the court had said should have been probed for alleged wrongdoing. As a result, the order uses very strong language, calling the current NAB chairman’s reasons for not proceeding with such cases “contemptuous disregard” of the court’s orders on the matter. It has also noted of what it said was the NAB chief’s “willful disobedience” in this regard. It says that “over the last about two years the Federal Government had demonstrated no interested in carrying out some of the directions of this Court”. Another option suggests a possible case of contempt against the prime minister, the federal law minister and the federal law secretary. Yet another option would see the apex court exercising “judicial restraint” and leave the matter for parliament to decide.

Indeed, the next few weeks, or even days, could prove to be very eventful.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 11^th, 2012.