Hubris falls

Even if we grant all players involved benefit of doubt — they have all deeply damaged country for self-aggrandisement.

Let’s be charitable and assume that the various players in the news have intentions as pure and innocent as a Shahid Afridi slog for six. Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and the Supreme Court were so truly determined to safeguard their institution’s oft-abused integrity, that they reluctantly had to order the removal of an elected civilian prime minister from power. The departed Yousaf Raza Gilani’s only loyalty was to the Constitution and to the immunity it granted the president — a commitment so deep that he was willing to defy a judicial order and lose his post in a doomed attempt to protect the rule of law.

Even if we grant all players involved the benefit of the doubt — which they certainly don’t deserve — there is no escaping the fact that they have all deeply damaged the country and done so for no reason other than their own self-aggrandisement. And they all seem to suffer from the one fatal flaw that is the greatest curse on humanity: a surplus of hubris.

Critics of the Supreme Court who, by random happenstance I’m sure, also happen to be supporters of the PPP, have accused Chief Justice Chaudhry and the other justices of essentially being a ‘B team’ of the army and carrying out its agenda under the guise of constitutionalism. It is a uniquely Pakistani trait to see a conspiracy beneath every opaque surface but it still takes a lot of gall to call the men who were chiefly responsible for bringing down a military dictator and who are now investigating unlawful kidnappings by the intelligence agencies, stooges of the military.

A better theory may simply be that the Supreme Court has given full expression to its opinion about itself. Cast as heroes and saviours, judges of the apex Court began believing the rhetoric and decided that only they could save the country. This meant putting aside legal niceties, such as jurisdiction, and ending up dismissing a prime minister who dared challenge their authority. The Supreme Court seems not to have a problem with the concept of civilian rule itself; by its own past record, its seems that civilian leaders have often been harshly dealt with by the Court.

This doesn’t mean that the actions of the prime minister were justified in any way. Whatever motivation the Supreme Court judges may have had, this did not give Gilani the authority to repeatedly ignore their orders. A democratic system cannot function if the executive picks and chooses which judicial edicts it feels like following. In defending his refusal to write a letter to the Swiss authorities, Gilani ended up equating himself and his party, already comfortable in the martyr pose, to democracy itself. To make that claim with any degree of seriousness requires staggering arrogance.

At no point did Gilani acknowledge that there is more to democracy than winning an election. It may now have become fashionable to refer to the judges as unelected tyrants in robes but there is a reason why the Supreme Court’s actions are not decided by referenda. One of democracy’s greatest enemies is the person who decides to do what he wants because he has the mandate of the people. The judges are meant to keep a check on that and thus cannot be ruled by popular passions.

This year-long drama was entirely avoidable. All it needed was for one of the many casts of characters — be it the chief justice, the prime minister or the president — to stand up and admit that democracy was more important than his own personal fate. None was willing to do so because they were all so intoxicated by the sweet nectar of their considerable sense of self-importance.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 21^st, 2012.