by Dr. Khalil Ahmad
Under an intensely charged situation like this where the Lawyers’ Long March is creating an amorphous perspective with no positive signals from any quarters, if one can afford a moment of unconcern, he will appreciate one move of General (Retired) Musharraf as far as the game of Pakistani politics is concerned.
Whatever were the reasons why Musharraf, an avowed enemy of Pakistan Peoples Party and its leadership, had to negotiate with and accept the return of Benazir Bhutto to Pakistan, and whoever were the culprits who planned her assassination, it is crystal clear that the Greatest Favor which Benazir could milk out of the protracted parleys between the military government and her came to be promulgated as the National Reconciliation Ordinance, under which public office holders were given a blank cheque of unlawful relief. But sometimes what we consider our greatest victory turns out to be our greatest failure afterwards.
Benazir might have thought it a personal gain of immeasurable magnitude and thus a stroke of genius that a good many number of cases of corruption and misuse of authority against her and her husband Asif Ali Zardari filed by the military government would be wiped out and bring her family a goldmine of fortune, and that she would be again in Pakistan to play the game of politics and enjoy the luxuries of leadership here. However, she did not survive to have all this materialized before her eyes.
In all this hectic personalized political drama, the only point that went starkly against her was that the first party to NRO did not trust her and her politics as much as they could rely on her husband. Unfortunately, things sailed smoothly for the first party and eventually after Benazir’s death Asif Ali Zardari as the political heir found himself heading the PPP. All is well that ends well. He steered the party out of February 18 elections attaining the majority vote in the Center and two of the four provinces. In the ensuing days, if on the one hand he was doing politics of reconciliation successfully wooing Awami National Party, Muttahida Qaumi Movement, and signing Murree Declaration with Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz Sharif) entering into a coalition with it and thus winning words of praise as a statesman, on the other hand all the cases against him pending in the local and foreign courts were being withdrawn under the NRO which finally baptized the once most reviled man in Pakistan to be the most innocent man of Pakistan. And all that at one stroke of luck!
As it is, a public leader ought to present him in the lawful courts of the country to get an honorable acquittal. But PPP leadership did not go that way and manipulated its popular standing to extort personal benefits out of the situation. The NRO is that notorious deal. It is immoral, illegal, unlawful and unconstitutional. That is why the NRO is acting like a heavy anchor to the PPP ship. It still binds PPP and Asif Ali Zardari not to act independently and in the interest of Pakistan and to fulfill the February 18 mandate. Or it may be that it is to their inherent taste. Thus it is evident how an unlawful and unconstitutional relief would let the beneficiaries to act lawfully and constitutionally and against those who yielded and obliged them!
Apart from all this, what is more ominous for Pakistan is the fact that the benefits of the NRO have gone mostly to the share of PPP leadership while its consequences, harmful and destructive to the cause of the restoration of the November 2 (2007) judiciary, are coming to the lot of the Lawyers’ Movement. Not only that, the NRO is affecting the whole of Pakistan, morally, socially, politically, and economically. This has held Pakistan hostage to the maneuverings of the elites for which crime and corruption are just normal way of life.
In the same vein, we can visualize a future Pakistan crying and croaking in the jaws of the most corrupt elites under the present leadership which includes the likes of Rehman Malik who is running the government. We can visualize a Pakistan where there will be no justice and where loot, favoritism, nepotism and all that which may be termed a travesty of the law and constitution will be rampant.
Also, as the NRO has completely exposed the nexus of the elites to undermine any good governance in Pakistan, it seems that the beneficiaries of the NRO in collaboration with the establishment are all set to dismantle the unprecedented movement for the rule of law, supremacy of the constitution and an independent judiciary in Pakistan. To them any effort to establish rule of law in Pakistan is detrimental to their vested interests.
So, as it seems if the Long March is not given any heed by the civil, military and political elites and by the parliament that represents them, or in other words if it achieves nothing and just exhausts the Lawyers’ Movement’s energy and momentum which it will not as is evident from the resolve of the lawyers and civil society activists and as is evident from the last 15 months’ continuous struggle, and if, at best, the Long March just succeeds in throwing out Musharraf, and if the rule of law movement weakens as desired by Asif Ali Zardari and his men, Pakistan once again will be in the lap of a government of the elites, by the elites and for the elites.
We must not forget and abandon the rule of law movement and its valor, its unity, its persistence, and its steadfastness, and we must keep its spirit alive. Temporary failure, if any, of the Long March in bearing no positive results will be only a moment of respite and to invigorate ourselves for a perpetual fight against the parasite elites of Pakistan. This movement for the rule of law must win. There is no going back. No doubt this movement can continue till 2013 with full vigor and with the same hope. Sure, after that we will have more Iftikhar Muhammad Chauduries in our midst to keep its flag up!
----------
Dr. Khalil Ahmad is president and founder of the Alternate Solutions Institute, Pakistan's first free-market think tank.
This article appeared in The Post on June 13, 2008.
