Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 27 January 2010 15.10 GMT

With his chequered past and unlikely rise to the top, it is understandable that Asif Ali Zardari has faced constant calls to resign ever since becoming president of Pakistan two years ago. The central focus of the grievances has been Pakistan’s supreme court where a raft of charges have been submitted against Zardari and most of the senior leaders of the ruling Pakistan Peoples party by a motley mix of political parties, private citizens, and the court itself.

But in the glasshouse that is Pakistani politics the risk is that perceptions of judicial independence will be shattered by all the stone throwing. To understand the fracas it is necessary to consider recent history. After public pressure forced the Zardari government to reinstate Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, there was widespread celebration that at last Pakistan had found one institution that was above the cronyism that has plagued political life here.

Tables turn quickly in Pakistan. So it is perhaps no surprise that almost immediately the reconstituted supreme court began hearing challenges against members of the Zardari government. That included a petition by the chief justice himself against the National Reconciliation Ordinance, an amnesty granted by former President Pervez Musharraf after the United States pushed him to welcome Zardari and his wife, the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007, back into Pakistani politics.

Last December the Chaudhry supreme court ruled the NRO was unconstitutional, opening the floodgates for the current cases. Although attention has focused on charges against Zardari, the irony is that many of those bringing them have a history of intimidating the courts, disavowing them for being un-Islamic or have themselves faced charges ranging from corruption to murder at some point in their career.

What makes the current drama intriguing is the way that age-old double standard has become enmeshed with new political twists. Historically incapable of reining in the powerful, the courts have always been a favoured forum for otherwise disparate opposition groups to occasionally forget their mutual disdain in order to channel their common enmity towards whoever happens to be in government. The difference now is that, for the first time, the powerful are fearful of Pakistan’s highest court. That exposes it to the risk of being swept along with the political zeitgeist.

As the country continues to struggle with terrorism and a flagging economy, Asif Zardari, long considered uncritically obedient to diktats from Washington, has become emblematic of a government that most Pakistanis find easy to hate and impossible to love. Known derisively as “Mr 10%” for his alleged embezzlement of government revenues while his wife was prime minister in the 1990s, the president has faced several lawsuits in Pakistan, Britain, France and Switzerland over the last 15 years. Although most of them were dropped after the NRO, the supreme court’s ruling that it was unconstitutional has breathed new life into Pakistan’s courts and at least two cases in Switzerland and France.

Like any politician, Zardari will do everything in his power to cling to the presidency. In a departure from what has hitherto been an aloof tenure, he has begun a countrywide speaking tour aimed at rousing public confidence. But, ironically, there is a good chance he will agree to curtail his legal and de facto powers as president. Already he has transferred the authority to launch Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal to the prime minister, a largely symbolic gesture given the army’s control of military affairs.

Yet Zardari still retains the power to appoint the chief of army staff, the most powerful post in the country, and dismiss the National Assembly. With General Ashfaq Kayani‘s term as army chief set to expire this year and parliament the only institution with the lawful power to revoke his presidential immunities, Zardari retains key bargaining chips should his situation deteriorate.

As president, Zardari enjoys constitutional immunity from criminal prosecution. But some legal experts argue that it does not preclude civil suits. Some, invoking nebulous provisions of the constitution inserted by the Islamist dictator Zia ul-Haq in 1985, have called for his removal on the grounds of poor character. Whatever the result of these arguments, it is clear that Zardari will be exposed to a toxic cocktail of civil and criminal charges the moment he leaves office.

Do not be surprised, then, if Zardari flees the country once his presidency ends, or if the Obama administration demands that he be left unmolested as a private citizen – much as the Bush administration protected former president Pervez Musharraf from prosecution when he resigned in August 2008. How does the supreme court fit into this? No one really knows. With the ball firmly in the court, however, it remains to be seen if the judges will pursue the military, mullahs and other politicians with the same vigour as they are pursuing Asif Zardari.

The knives are out when dictators fall from power, but the politics of retribution is rarely clean or cathartic

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 30 August 2009 17,00 BST

The tables turn quickly in politics, but for dictators the shift from all-powerful to powerless can be rather sudden. Over a period of 12 months, the last Shah of Iran went from feared dictator to refugee who struggled to find asylum in three different continents (including the US, his one-time staunchest supporter).

Most out-of-power autocrats look to self-imposed exile to shield themselves from vengeful countrymen desperate to settle scores. Perhaps that is why Pakistan’s Musharraf, former president and army chief, recently bought a central London apartment.

There was a brief period of quiet after Musharraf was pressured to resign as president in August last year. That silence was soon broken, however, as he engaged in a worldwide speaking tour. More recently, the retired army chief made overtures to the main faction of a political party, the Muslim League Qaid branch, favoured under his rule, only to be rejected.

Perhaps even more damning, the army’s top spokesperson, General Athar Abbas, wrote a revealing article on an official website, arguing that Musharraf and other previous military rulers had harmed the army’s image.

Even political foes are now lining up to bring Musharraf down, and, in scenes reminiscent of the backlash against Indira Gandhi following her 1977 electoral defeat in neighbouring India, Pakistan’s courts have become a central front in the drama.

Several different actions have been filed at the courts, ranging from those involving people kidnapped by security agencies under Musharraf’s rule to those challenging his alleged role in the murder of the celebrated Balochi statesmen Akbar Khan Bughti.

Politically motivated court cases are not new in Pakistan. The country’s first democratically elected leader, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was hanged after a court – under pressure from then Army Chief Zia ul Haq – found him guilty of a trumped-up charge of conspiracy to murder a political rival. Practically every prominent politician has had charges against them brought to the bench.

The Musharraf trials are nevertheless unprecedented in this country’s young history of democratic rule – military rulers are rarely brought to trial here. Indeed, no military ruler has ever been brought before the due process of the law.

But the current battle is broader than Musharraf or the legacy of military rule he represents. Among the petitions filed with the courts are several that seek to annul the National Reconciliation Ordinance under which the former president allowed exiled political leaders like Benazir Bhutto to return to Pakistan to contest elections eventually held in February 2008. Bhutto was killed two months before those elections, but the NRO enabled her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, to eventually become the country’s president.

In seeking to dismantle his legacy current political players are also looking to undermine incumbent politicians, particularly President Asif Ali Zardari.

The NRO washed away the stain of previous corruption charges that had disqualified Zardari and several of his stalwarts from high office. Zardari alone was cleared of five outstanding corruption charges a mere month after his party won the February 2008 elections. Removal of NRO protection would almost certainly reopen these dirty cans of worms bringing government business to a total halt.

Although the supreme court – Pakistan’s highest judiciary – has avoided ruling on the NRO cases, late last month it ruled a state of emergency imposed by Musharraf in November 2007 illegal. According to Athar Minallah, a senior member of the lawyers’ movement that challenged the former president’s clamp-down, the ruling demonstrates that “Pakistan is on its path towards rule of law”.

Detractors say the case unduly politicises the judiciary which – given it includes no fewer than 14 judges, including the chief justice, dismissed by Musharraf under the state of emergency – cannot promise neutrality.

To its credit, however, the supreme court has avoided the issue of charging Musharraf with treason, saying it is a matter for parliament to decide. For its part, the government says it won’t endorse cases against Musharraf, although Attorney-General Sardar Latif Khosa spiced things up by saying it would support his prosecution if unanimously sought by parliament.

Such tribulations are common to many countries going through the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet infamously received lifetime amnesty from charges of torture and other crimes until eventually being brought to trial shortly before his death. In contrast, many Argentinean generals guilty of atrocities during their country’s “Dirty War” during the 1970s and 80s were eventually prosecuted.

The Obama administration is currently wrestling with the decision whether to investigate US interrogators for alleged torture of suspected terrorists, although the prospect of high level officials such as former vice president, Dick Cheney, secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, or Bush himself being charged remains unlikely.

The chances of Pervez Musharraf being indicted are probably more likely, but remain slim. Regardless, the current court dramas demonstrate the increasing influence of the judiciary, and especially the supreme court, in Pakistan’s political landscape.

My first piece from Pakistan for NewMatilda.com has just been posted. It’s on the lawyers movement seeking the reinstatement of the judiciary sacked by President Musharraf last year and a general improvement in the rule of law. Here’s a longer, unedited version:

It was a hot, humid day in Karachi last Wednesday, perhaps an appropriate setting for a movement still burning with a desire for change. Iftikhar Chaudhry, the deposed Chief Justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, spoke to a packed gathering at the Sindh High Court in a hall bearing his name. Chaudhry called on Pakistan’s lawyers to continue their demands for an independent judiciary. “Without the rule of law, there will be no end to injustice in this country.” He later added that the lack of transparency had led to flagging foreign investment in the country, alluding to a recent Pakistan State Bank report on an alarming increase in national debt and inflation.

In May last year Musharraf sacked several federal and provincial judges in a move widely condemned as an attempt to neuter the threat of an independent judiciary. He later reconstituted the Supreme Court, Pakistan’s highest court, with a bench of handpicked judges. (You can read my reports on these events for NewMatilda.com here and here.)

“The main problem in this country is [that] powerful people are above the law,” said Abid Feroze, a young lawyer involved in the movement. “Throughout our history the judges have supported the dictators. Now, for once, someone is challenging this impunity.”

“How can we have justice when our judges are not independent?” added Sarwar Khan, one of the most senior barristers at the gathering. Last year Khan, along with hundreds of others, was imprisoned for three weeks during a protest in Karachi against the removal of judges.

“We were kept in a hall, seventy of us. There were no beds, no sheets, nothing. So we had to sleep on the ground. There was one bathroom for everybody… they wanted us to accept that we were disturbing the peace. We refused… eventually they let us go [because] they couldn’t charge us.”

Lawyers and journalists jostled for positions as senior advocates and deposed judges from each of Pakistan’s four major provinces spoke at last week’s event. The assembled lawyers chanted “go Musharraf, go” while consecutive speakers railed at the inability of Pakistan’s five month old civilian government to reinstall the judges sacked by President Musharraf last year.

The movement has given the government until 14 August to reinstate all sacked judges. “If they are not returned, we will [recommence] our civil disobedience,” said Muneer Malik, another senior lawyer.

Government authorities did not allow any of Pakistan’s numerous satellite channels to broadcast the event live. According to a media source who refused to be named, the decision suggests that a civilian government that campaigned on a platform openly hostile to Musharraf at the last elections does not want to upset the General who in 1999 took control of the country in a bloodless coup.

Pakistan’s fragile civilian administration remains plagued by the decision of senior government figures, most notably Pakistan People’s Party Chairman Asif Zardari, to delay the reinstatement of judges sacked by President Musharraf. Officially, the PPP argues that constitutional issues need to be addressed before any reinstatement takes place.

Privately, however, there is widespread speculation that there are other motivations. The feeling is that PPP boss Zardari fears a reinstated and reinvigorated Supreme Court will make an adverse finding on a number of corruption cases involving the billionaire husband of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Some, such as Chief Justice Chaudhry and other leaders of the lawyers’ movement, suspect the PPP-led government has reached a compromise with Musharraf aimed at frustrating moves to have the judges returned. The other major coalition partner, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League, supports their immediate reinstatement.

In the immediate future, however, such demands appear unlikely to be met. “We are here for the long haul,” Sarwar Khan told me. “Already it has been 16 months [without the reinstatement of judges]. But if you look at it, Pakistan has been waiting for justice for a lot longer.”