How far will the court go?

Supporters of Pakistan’s democratic transition fear the army is waiting to step in

Turmoil, thy name is Pakistan. Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SC) was embroiled in a corruption scandal, as a powerful property tycoon went public with allegations that he had bribed the son of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry to the tune of several million dollars in a bid to win favourable judgments from the court.

Chaudhry, the crusading judge whose refusal to step down in March 2007 when General Pervez Musharraf demanded his resignation led to Musharraf’s eventual demise a year later, is arguably the most popular public figure in Pakistan.

Would the scandal cut down the larger-than-life judge and curb his enthusiasm for judicial activism?

The answer came on July 19, and it was a resounding no. With a stroke of the pen, CJ Chaudhry, heading a three-member bench, consigned Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to the waste bin of history.

The ineffectual Gilani had led an espically incompetent and corrupt government since 2008 but ultimately was ousted by the court for something very unusual — refusing to write a letter to Swiss authorities asking them to reopen corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari, Gilani’s boss as the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), which led to Gilani being convicted by the SC for contempt of court in late April.

With Gilani gone, the PPP-led coalition in Islamabad chose the conciliatory route instead of going on the warpath against the superior judiciary. It proposed the name of another PPP stalwart from Punjab, Makhdoom Shahabuddin, as Gilani’s replacement.

But hours after his nomination, and a couple of days before Parliament was to meet to elect Shahabuddin, an anti-narcotics court judge in Rawalpindi announced a warrant for the arrest of the prime minister-in-waiting. The warrant came at the behest of the army-led anti-narcotics force.

Cue further turmoil. Were shadowy but powerful anti-democratic forces manoeuvring in the background to bring down an unpopular government and replace it with a technocratic one that was supposed to shore up a flagging economy and purge the political class?

Once again, the PPP chose not to fight fire with fire — but it did nominate as Shahabuddin’s replacement another minister who had earned the nickname “Rental Raja” for his role in a corruption-riddled rental power plants (RPP) scheme that was dreamt up as a response to the country’s severe power crisis and was shot down by the SC earlier this year.

On Friday, Raja Pervez Ashraf was elected PM by the National Assembly with a comfortable majority, but an uncomfortable future awaits him. The SC had already recommended that Raja be prosecuted for his role in the RPP scam and now as PM, the court could also dismiss him if, like his predecessor, he refuses to write the so-called Swiss letter, as seems likely.

As the drama continues to unfold, there is little certainty where this will end.

The real force behind the government is President Zardari and he appears determined to achieve what no civilian government has managed since the 1970s — completion of a full term in office. But that date is next March — a lifetime in Pakistani politics.

The SC, meanwhile, appears determined at the very least to establish itself as an equal player alongside the traditional power centres in Pakistan — the army and the political class.

What remains to be seen is if the court is aiming even higher — perhaps to use its newfound power to oust a dysfunctional and unpopular, but elected, government and replace it with an unelected leadership to “save” Pakistan from economic meltdown and governance paralysis?

For its part, the army has been content to watch from the sidelines — though its fingerprints were visible all over the thwarting of the Shahabuddin candidacy last week.

The fear among supporters of the tenuous transition to democracy is that the army is waiting for the increasingly internecine warfare between the government and the judiciary and among the political class to slip towards chaos — at which point the men in uniform will step in and say, “Alright, boys, enough’s enough. You’re all going home and we’re taking over.”

To the extent that the fate of the government is in its own hands now, it has two options to save the democratic process — that being no hyperbole after the events of recent weeks.

One, the government can call early elections — an act that will ease the political pressure that has built up to intolerable levels and that threatens a return to the bad old days of alternating civilian and military governments.

But because that’s precisely what the opponents and enemies of the PPP have been pressing for over the last couple of years, the government is unlikely to relent. In this game, survival depends on defiance, not capitulation.

Two, the government can improve its governance record.

And because that’s an idea likely to be met with howls of derision by anyone who has seen the present government operate — stay tuned to

Pakistan. There may be much more to come.

The writer is an Islamabad-based assistant editor with ‘Dawn’