The constitution, the letter and the memo

Government claims ‘restoring’ original 1973 constitution, but it still remains riddled with Zia’s Eighth Amendment.

Long ago, in another century, Ziaul Haq, president of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and chief of its mighty army, once said that the constitution is not a sacrosanct document, it is man-made and, therefore, just a piece of paper that can be torn up and consigned to the waste-paper basket.

Well, he had a point, man-made it is, and manhandled it has been. Its maker, democrat Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, made seven amendments to his constitution between May 1974 and May 1977, their purposes being the undermining of the rights of individuals and the judiciary. And even worse was the birth of the constitution, when four hours after its promulgation, its maker declared that the November 1971 proclamation of emergency was still in force and the right to move any court for the enforcement of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution was suspended, no court could be approached. Thus, the people were deprived of 10 major fundamental rights until Bhutto had dealt with members of the opposition in a manner he deemed fit, arresting and jailing. Its beginning was highly inauspicious and totally undemocratic.

However, rather than ripping it up, Zia later went on to tailor it to his own warped beliefs and needs, rendering it almost unintelligible and fraught with contradictions through his Eighth Amendment.

The interpretation of this constitution is now a prime factor in the almost farcical and fanciful happenings involving the government, the establishment and the judiciary, wrangling which have brought any semblance of governance to a standstill, providing much entertainment to the media of other countries who follow the affairs of the Islamic Republic, in so far as their own national interests are concerned.

The unwritten letter and the unowned memo involve the constitution and its interpretation. Well, it seems that no two people are capable of interpreting it in concord. This government, after it had produced the Eighteenth Amendment out of its self-interest hat, proudly boasted that his had ‘restored’ the original 1973 constitution. This is a load of codswallop. It has done no such thing. The constitution remains riddled with bits and pieces of Zia’s Eighth Amendment, which, the government through lack of gumption dared not do away with — it is riddled with riddles, all of them unsolvable. Merely removing Article 58(2)(b) has little to do with ‘restoration’.

The matters of the unwritten letter and the unowned memo need to be resolved and put away as swiftly as possible. Why can’t the government cease procrastinating, write the wretched letter, and let the Swiss respond? The prime minister did his bit, ‘creating history’ as some tuft hunters have it, driving himself to the Court in a vehicle with a controversial number plate, duly accompanied by a hefty motorcade and helicopter coverage, to appear before their Lordships of the apex Court. Like the Americans, he seemingly has an aversion to the word ‘sorry’ and, so far, has got away with what surely is contempt of court. Their Lordships need to make up their minds, finish off it and the other matter, and get on with their enormous backlog of cases which involve the sufferings of the ordinary citizen of this country.

The memo should be relegated to the trash can, put away and forgotten as it was by the man to whom it was sent. The truth as to who masterminded it can never be known. Sting operations by the powerful must remain wrapped in a haze. A clue to who — we know why — was given with the willingness of Mansoor Ijaz to meet DG-ISI Shuja Pasha and for Pasha to accept Ijaz’s terms for the meeting, within 12 days of the publication of the Financial Times article in which, inter much alia, Ijaz urged “More precise policies are needed to remove the cancer that ISI and its rogue wings have become on the Pakistani state”.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 28^th, 2012.