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The Nawaz Sharif Judgement

Quo Vadis, Pakistan?

by Ahmad T. Karim
***The international community will have a very important role to play. They must consciously decide now, are they friends of the ordinary people of Pakistan, or of the Pakistani military. In any action they take, they must put those contemplated actions to a litmus test: will such action benefit the military regime, or will it ultimately benefit the needs of the ordinary people of that country. . .***
THE first phase of Mr. Nawaz Sharifs trial Is over. The judgment is a body blow to the Military regime's expectation. Hamstrung as the Judiciary Is In Pakistan, the Judgment reflects a fine balance between pandering to some extent the Military Establishment's objectives, and satisfying to some extent the demands of Justice and fairplay as well. Given the constraining parameters within which the institution of the Judiciary in Pakistan has developed in the last 53 years, that Mr. Sharif has riot been awarded the death sentence Is In Itself an act of bravery on the part of the Judge. The last lime a Pakistani Prime Minister was on the docks on a capital charge, the Judgment was a foregone conclusion. 1 have heard stories in Pakistan that the late, but hardly lamented, General Ziaul Huq is said to have commented: " 1 see clearly one noose before me but two necks, and it is not mine which Is going to go in that noose!” Mr. Bhutto had not endeared himself to many, by his arrogance, authoritarianism and his dubious role in the events of 1970-71 which led to the break-away of Bangladesh from Pakistan. But all said and done, as has been commented here in this country. his execution was simply "judicial murder". Many may. or may not. have mourned the passing of Mr. Bhutto, but his friends and foes alike did mourn the demise of Justice in Ills case.
The similarity In the standoff this time, between another civilian Prime Minister, and his appointed Chief of Army Staff is certainly palpable and striking. With one exception — this time, the civilian Prime Minister was elected with a clear majority by the people, and he continued to hold a commanding majority in the people's parliament. It is another matter that he had become so vastly unpopular. However. popularity is at best a passing phase for almost any leader in most developing and poor countries. The magnitude and dimension of the problems of poverty-ridden countries with big populations outpacing economic growth, like in the countries of South Asia but particularly in Pakistan, are so complex and so vast, that no mortal leader can deliver any miracles. The pressures of survival In such problem-ridden
countries inevitably tends to endow the public with very short memories, and they end up demonizing, after relatively short spans of time, the very leaders they themselves had idolized earlier and raised to high pedestals. The honeymoon period for leaders in such circumstances tends to be notoriously short.
1 am no legal expert, but reading through the text of the Judgment I am struck by the tongue-in-cheek manner In which Mr. Nawaz Sharif has been given The lesser sentence". If anything, a closer reading of the sentence is a damning Indictment of the Military, for the Judge concedes:
a) that the murder case brought by the prosecution against Mian Nawaz Sharif was not tenable since the plane In question was allowed to land for refueling;
b) that all the other co-ac-cused with him were not guilty and he therefore acquitted
c) that when the alleged offense of attempting to hijacking was committed, at that time the said offense was "not a schedule offense" under the terms of the original Notification of the Law. but retrospectively included by the amendment to the original notification on December 2. 1999;
d) that "the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, who was Defense Minister also, came to know that his authority was eroded by some few army soldiers. therefore he has reacted in this manner" and committed the said offence "at the spur of the moment and in the heat of passion".
So what exactly has the "then Prime Minister who was defense minister also" been convicted of? For trying to stave off an illegal coup against his elected government, or for taking an ill-judged action "at the spur of the moment and in the heat of passion"? My layman’s commonsense translates that as meaning that Mr. Sharif
as the legal Head of Government. his perceived unpopularity notwithstanding, was merely taking defensive action in averting a coup d'etat, an Illegal act, by the Army Chief of Staff who Is supposed to be subordinate to and loyal to the constitutionally elected government. The charge on which Mr. Nawaz Sharif has been convicted is, I presume. Itself open to ridicule by any clever criminal lawyer. Moreover, as some mischievous people In Pakistan have pointed out. the General's plane could have landed in any of the country's several military bases, had the General so chosen, since he so thoroughly controlled the levers of military power as demonstrated by him as soon as he landed. So was the whole exercise in indicting him with those specific charges a conspiracy, as Mrs. Kulsoom Nawaz, the wife of the hapless Prime Minister has openly contended? In Pakistan, one can never be sure that it is not. since the history of that country Is replete with Instances of "conspiracies” cooked up by highly imaginative minds in the military or quasi-mllitary establishment, to suppress any perceived civilian encroachments upon their exclusive turf.
The General and his regime are not likely to let this case go. Their own survival Is at stake here. The co-accused who were acquitted have not been released yet. Both parties can. and will, appeal against the judgment to the Sindh High Court first, and then to the Supreme Court. In the meantime. if Mr. Sharifs brother, Mr. Shahbaz Sharif, who is the real political animal in the Sharif family, is allowed to go free, he might well succeed in re-inventing his brother's image as a martyr figure over a period of time, and once again rally and polarize popular support around Mr. Nawaz Sharif. In the South Asian tradition, such leaders do not simply fade
away, and today’s villains can well bounce back as tomorrow s heroes. Remember Mrs. Indira Gandhi, who was written off in 1977? It took her less than a year to return with triumph to center stage.
The Military Establishment In Pakistan has transformed into a law unto itself, right from the very birth of Pakistan in 1947. Pakistan's political institutions have been so weakened by the rapacity of the Military that, contrary to what the Military claim as an excuse for their lu.est coup. 10 years were not enough for the democratic process to establish sustainable roots and take off on a mature course. Democracy is a process, and every country must evolve it to suit its own genius and needs. Institution building needs time, and a great deal of Investment In education and public awareness programs, for developing intrinsic resilience. The democracies In the Western world also evolved through their own processes, taking centuries before graduating and transforming gradually from feudalism to peoples power. Pakistan is still very, very far away from such a defining moment. Its politics is still overwhelmingly feudal based. And the Military Establishment, in collusion often with an elitist-based bureaucracy, never really fave the process a fair chance, he paramountcy of the army in Pakistan is directly antithetical to the growth and development of the democratic process in that country. The army’s raison d'etre is the threat perception from and continuing confrontation with India. Therefore, it has deeply-entrenched vested interest in keeping active, and prolonging, this confrontation. If a civilian. or even a quasi-civilian government, even with limited mandate of the people, dared to edge towards a rapprochement with the enemy, the army would immediately scuttle such efforts. if ne< essary by removing
the government. And every successive military rule has only resulted in turning the clock back. Every successive conflict, or confrontation in an arms race, or missile race, or the nuclear race, with India has dragged the country’s economy further down, leaving progressively less and less for the country's economic development and societal needs.
The Military has always ignored the basic truth that If the economy was In shambles, it was largely so because of pandering to the Jingoism of the extreme right and the Military, pouring the bulk of the nation s resources into an arms and missile race, and finally the nuclear race as well. If anything. these were really the root cause for the country’s endemic economic malaise. Perhaps Nawaz Sharif was playing a desperate balancing game, trying to keep the military and the right fringe happy, hoping to contain them by pampering them, while at the same time proceeding as fast as he could to normalizing relations with India. which was part of his popular mandate anyway. It did not work. Appeasing fanaticism, or megalomania, never does. Remember Munich?
Much has been written in the Pakistan and international media about the sighs of relief and Joy. which greeted the coup in Pakistan. Of the wide unpopularity of the Prime Minister. The undisputed fact remains that Nawaz Sharif was an elected Prime Minister, the first one in Pakistan’s history to have been elected with a convincing mandate. He was the Head of government, and in that capacity, he had the prerogative of hiring or firing the service chiefs. But as has happened so often in Pakistan, the tall wagged the dog. The military coup was illegal. Merely having indulged In It so often in the past and quoting precedence dues not give it legal status or justify It. If military coups could have been the panacea to
the problems of a country or lu peoples. Its virtues would have supplanted democratic, or other institutions of governance in many parts of the world. We would still have Marcos tn (he Philippines. and Suharto tn jn. donesia. and an Abacha jn Nigeria, and many more such dictators In other African Asian and Latin American countries.
The Instruments of fanati-cism which Pakistan helped create In Afghanistan arc now, like the proverbial chicken, ali coming home to roost. Rumblings of how little General Musharraf has progressed on his many promises, all old wine in new bottles, are beginning to be muttered. The General Is riding a tiger, and therein lies the danger, for this will leave him with no option but to cling on desperately to it and prolong his ride for as long as ne can. Because of the information revolution. the time span between rumblings and outright outbursts of dissent is. however, likely to become progressively telescoped. The General may not get as much time as his Illustrious predecessors did, the eleven years of Ziaul Huq. or the ten years of Ayub, or even the less than three years of Yahya Khan. So we shall, in all likelihood, witness more attempts on the part of the General to roll back the Judgment, to deny the Sharif family an opportunity to re-invent themselves as political entities to reckon with and bounce back to center-stage in Pakistan.
Given the situation, the International community will have a very important role to play. They must consciously decide now, are they friends of the ordinary people of Pakistan. or of the Pakistani military. In any action they take, they must put those contemplated actions to a litmus test: will such action benefit the military regime, or will it ultimately benefit the needs of the ordinary people of that hapless country, in building their devastated institutions and giving them an intrinsic resilience which, in the ultimate analysis, is the best security of any state.
The author is former Ambassador of Bangladesh to Iran. Lebanon, and South Africa. He is presently a visiting scholar as "Distinguished International Executive in Residence' University of Maryland. USA.