The Canvas

In a historic 10-3 decision by 13 judges of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, the once disposed Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has been reinstated to his former designation. For brevity, let me call him CJ.

While pro-democracy Pakistanis rejoice over the fact that a major scalp has been taken in their struggle to over throw the military government of President General Musharraf, most of us are enjoying the fact that the Supreme Courts finally showed some balls to the Military setup in Pakistan. For decades on end the Supreme Courts had been but a mere puppet institution to the executives of the government which usually included some groups of the intelligence agencies. This was made evident by the affidavits that were issued from the offices of top intelligence agencies against the CJ. Whether they were legitimate or not, this short order has actually nullified those. It came to our knowledge that some of them were forged too, the details of which will appear as they are disclosed.

The News reports that there were special arrangements made for the proceedings out side the Supreme Court building in Islamabad,

On this occasion, special security arrangements were made outside the Supreme Court by posting heavy contingents of police. [Link]

MicroPakistan has done a good job at a detailed write-up about all this and they say,

A thirteen member bench of the Supreme Court has decided on the petition submitted by CJ Iftikhar Chaudhry and declared the following:

• Restraint, forced leave and suspension orders of the chief justice (by the President and Supreme Judicial Council) have been abrogated unanimously and declared as being unconstitutional. This effectively restores Iftikhar Chaudhry to his post of Chief Justice and one which he can continue to occuply till 2013.
• The reference under Article 209 has been set aside with three dissenting justices. This marks the end of the (dare I say, first) reference submitted to the Supreme Judicial Council by President Musharraf.

After 60 years, the rule of law has finally been held supreme over the wishes of a military man. Perhaps, this marks a change to be remembered but hopefully a change that will last beyond today. Perhaps there is light at the end of a tunnel that has all but sucked every shred of hope from the average Pakistani, especially over the last few weeks.

Amongst all the happy faces, the joyous souls and exuberant citizens of Pakistan, I remain apprehensive for a lot of reasons.

I for one believe a pivotal institution of Pakistan has taken it’s first step today in gaining independence from the shackles of a select few. A step that will, in theory, help the democratic processes of Pakistan. The main role of the judiciary is of sentencing a crime to an appropriate punishment. It won’t select for you your leader. The judiciary of any country is a passive organ that comes into play when and where it sees injustice or lawlessness. Voting for the right candidate ultimately remains our decision. Whatever that is, no one will hinder or help us in making that, not even the judiciary.

This is where I believe the Pakistani nation is still quite immature and inexperienced, we are still evolving. For a reason that we have not learned even in these 8 years of Military rule how to conduct ourselves and how to get our voices heard. The freedom of press and the freedom of the electronic media as tool to get information that is not monopolized by the influential bodies including the government is still a concept that has not been had. A fact for which both the government officials and the citizenry are to be blamed. For me, except the blogging community that is an off-shoot of journalism in Pakistan, there is no other information media that has really earned it’s right to have a say in matters that affect national interest. Quite often biased commentary and curtaining of facts to make a news sensational make their way to our television screens. Our opinions are based on these channels of communication, and the slight mis-communication can lead to irreparable damaged for generations on end. While sensationalism might evoke the human emotion, it would be the last thing we need a voter to have while voting. Nadeem Paracha beautifully writes about this culture in his article ‘The Dogs are Dead’ for The Dawn Magazine on 16th July 2007,

And lo and behold! Many have come up trumps discovering a massive market hungry for the latest conspiracy theory. That’s why, on these channels “political talk shows” hardly ever go beyond discussing speculative political gossip and senseless mudslinging matches and worse, a whole series of so-called in-depth “documentaries” on topics ranging from “Signs of the day of judgment” to who really fell the World Trade Centre.

Most nations over the world prefer democracy or one or other form of it as a perfect representation system for themselves; we as a nation have not yet converged on a single style of democracy to suit our needs. Political parties, and anti-military/army entities often claim democracy to be an ‘all in one’ solution to many of Pakistan’s problems. I believe otherwise. The 90’s decade is a testament to the complete system failure that was being purported to be ‘democratic’. We had almost eight to nine prime-ministers in the same number of years. Be it for leadership reasons, be it for international pressures, be it for corruption charges, be it for bad decision making, be it for any reason at all, we cannot handle ourselves as a democratic nation, yet. For four consecutive regimes we shuffled between two main players, that did the same wrongs they did the last time, yet we could not figure them out on time and didn’t learn from our past choices. Naive you may say, but I am not blaming anyone for rigging the polls, when that too was a major reason for landslide victories for seats in the face of unseen odds.

People usually say we need more time to try it out, test it out and mash it into near-perfection. I believe 60 years is a time good enough to have figured out what is and what isn’t going to work. More over, the national level would be the worst place to make a testing ground out of. Instead, for that we do not need to reinvent the wheel, we just need to use the right materials for it to work with our vehicle. And those materials that I talk about are to be drawn out by the educated community of this country.

One sad fact being that we do not have a large percentage of literate Pakistanis that can think and speak for themselves in such matters. Our academia and intelligentsia are another sad lot; they are either too busy pursuing self-appraisal projects, or aren’t even bothered with discussing a plausible framing of a structure as a national representation system, nor do they have the resources, the forums or the support that is required to undertake studies of such magnitude. While some writers to tend to write about it in their articles that tackle an assortment of social, societal and political issues, their voices are either go unheeded or are lost in the fray of information these days. The lack of academic expertise of these and related subjects, plus the appropriate amount of audience leads me to believe we will have always have a sham of a democracy whenever time comes.

Only 10 days have passed since the Lal Masjid crackdown and we already have had 9 to 11 suicide bombings all over the country killing more or less 100 people. Sad indeed, but one has to learn from them too and it is indeed very clear from the public opinion that the Islamist elements in the country are either very displeased at that operation or are now against for what the government stands for today. ‘Enlightenment’ to some, a joke to others. Hence incorporation of Islam into the judicial, educational and economic matters with an appropriate proportion and it’s equal dispensation of the law over all sects is paramount. These and a few other things that need to be chalked out first open-hearted and with open-mindedness, discussed thoroughly without prejudice and then tested. We however lag far far behind in any sort of comprehensive research on the subject matter.

Cartoon credit Jang News Paper.

There is however much to look forward to. We can, if we truly want to, see ourselves rise among the ranks of great nations of the world. Liberty, justice, freedom (speech, education, religion), information and humanity are just a few core values that I am sure we as a Muslim and a citizen of the world have been taught to respect and embrace. Local representation will help vent anger, but it won’t turn this place into a utopia for which our struggles and desires at the moment are quite paradoxical. We have miles to go before we sleep, and before I sleep, I hope to dwell upon a few other reasons as to why today’s Pakistan is more rigid toward true democratic change. Power to the people!