Pakistan�s Tyranny Continues (by AITZAZ AHSAN)

Mon Dec 24 19:33:24 IST 2007

An opinion piece by Aitzaz Ahsan in The New York Times is reproduced below.

  What has peeved me in this piece are Aitzaz Ahsan's references to  Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the erstwhile Chief Justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court, who was kicked out by Musharraf.

  To act as lead counsel for Chaudhry is Aitzaz Ahsan's right and duty as a lawyer to provide representation for a client be it a criminal or an innocent. But, Aitzaz Ahsan does a grave injustice to his own principled politics for the defense of Democracy in Pakistan, when he talks about Chaudhry in any laudatory terms.

  Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry bears culpability in allowing the continuation of Military Dictatorship in Pakistan. If Musharraf's coup against the elected government of Nawaz Sharif was treason against the Constitution of Pakistan (as it certainly was), then Chaudhry is complicit in the furtherance of that treason by providing support through "compliance" and "approval" through Legal Judgments.

  - 12th Oct 1999 - Musharraf engineers coup against elected government of Nawaz Sharif. (Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry is Chief Justice of Balochistan High Court)

  - 14th Oct 1999 - Musharraf proclaims Emergency with retrospective effect from 12th Oct 1999. Musharraf declares himself Chief Executive, suspends the National Assembly, Provisional Assemblies and the Senate, suspends the Federal and Provincial cabinets and Provincial Governors. Musharraf places """' ... the whole of Pakistan ..... under the control of the Armed Forces of Pakistan.""""" .  
  (Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry is Chief Justice of Balochistan High Court)

  - 14th Oct 1999 - Musharraf promulgates the Provisional Constitution Order No.1 of 1999. Amongst other matters, this PCO contains the proviso:

   """"" .....that the Supreme Court or High Courts and any other court shall not have the powers to make any order against the Chief Executive or any person exercising powers or jurisdiction under his authority;..."""""

  The PCO also has the injunctions:

"""""" (1)   
   No Court, Tribunal or other authority shall call or permit to be called in question the proclamation of Emergency of 14th day of October, 1999 or any Order made in pursuance thereof.   
        (2)   
   No judgment, decree, writ, order or process whatsoever shall be made or issued by any court or tribunal against the Chief Executive or any authority designated by the Chief Executive. """""""   
  (Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry continues as Chief Justice of Balochistan High Court)

  - 25th Jan 2000 - Musharraf issues the Oath of Office (Judges) Order, 2000. It applied to all Judges of Supreme Court, High Courts and Federal Shariat Court.

  By taking the the Oath, a Judge submitted to the affirmation:

  """"""....... shall be bound by the provisions of this Order, the Proclamation of Emergency of the fourteenth day of October, 1999 and the Provisional Constitution Order No. 1 of 1999 as amended and, notwithstanding any judgment of any court, shall not call in question or permit to be called in question the validity of any of the provisions thereof. """""""

  Along with many Judges of the High Courts, 13 Judges of the Supreme Court including the Chief Justice Saeed-uz-Zamaan Siddiqui refused to take the Oath. Some of them resigned in a formal manner, others were simply no longer recognized as Judges. 

  (Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry took this Oath)

  - 4th Feb 2000 - Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry is appointed as a Judge in the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

  - 12th May 2000 - Bench of the Supreme Court hearing challenges to Musharraf's coup, in it's verdict gives a Legal endorsement to the coup by invoking the "doctrine of necessity". Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was a member of that Supreme Court bench.

  The "doctrine of necessity" excuse had been used by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 1954 to validate Governor General Ghulam Mohammed's proclamation of Emergency and dissolution of Pakistan's First Constituent Assembly. The "doctrine" was again used by the Supreme Court in 1978 to declare as "Legal" General Zia ul Haq's dictatorship and Martial Law. 

  - 7th May 2005- Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry is appointed as Chief Justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court by the Military Dictator General Parvez Musharraf

  - 3rd Nov 2007 -  Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry is cast out from the Judiciary by the Military Dictator General Parvez Musharraf

  Kshmendra Kaul

  PS : The accolades received by Chaudhry and the 'awards' conferred on him by the various bodies quoted by Aitzaz Ahsan cannot absolve Chaudhry of his guilt in the perpetuation of Military Dictatorship in Pakistan. What we do get an idea of is how ill-informed the named institutions are

  Pakistans Tyranny Continues
  By AITZAZ AHSAN
  Lahore, Pakistan

    THE chief justice of Pakistans Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, and his family have been detained in their house, barricaded in with barbed wire and surrounded by police officers in riot gear since Nov. 3. Phone lines have been cut and jammers have been installed all around the house to disable cellphones. And the United States doesnt seem to care about any of that. 

  The chief justice is not the only person who has been detained. All of his colleagues who, having sworn to protect, uphold and defend the Constitution, refused to take a new oath prescribed by President Pervez Musharraf as chief of the army remain confined to their homes with their family members. The chief justices lawyers are also in detention, initially in such medieval conditions that two of them were hospitalized, one with renal failure.

  As the chief justices lead counsel, I, too, was held without charge  first in solitary confinement for three weeks and subsequently under house arrest. Last Thursday morning, I was released to celebrate the Id holidays. But that evening, driving to Islamabad to say prayers at Faisal Mosque, my family and I were surrounded at a rest stop by policemen with guns cocked and I was dragged off and thrown into the back of a police van. After a long and harrowing drive along back roads, I was returned home and to house arrest. 

  Every day, thousands of lawyers and members of the civil society striving for a liberal and tolerant society in Pakistan demonstrate on the streets. They are bludgeoned by the regimes brutal police and paramilitary units. Yet they come out again the next day. 

  People in the United States wonder why extremist militants in Pakistan are winning. What they should ask is why does President Musharraf have so little respect for civil society  and why does he essentially have the backing of American officials? 

  The White House and State Department briefings on Pakistan ignore the removal of the justices and all these detentions. Meanwhile, lawyers, bar associations and institutes of law around the world have taken note of this brave movement for due process and constitutionalism. They have displayed their solidarity for the lawyers of Pakistan. These include, in the United States alone, the American Bar Association, state and local bars stretching from New York and New Jersey to Louisiana, Ohio and California, and citadels of legal education like Harvard and Yale Law Schools.

  The detained chief justice continues to receive enormous recognition and acknowledgment. Harvard Law School has conferred on him its highest award, placing him on the same pedestal as Nelson Mandela and the legal team that argued Brown v. Board of Education. The National Law Journal has anointed him its lawyer of the year. The New York City Bar Association has admitted him as a rare honorary member. Despite all this, the Musharraf regime shows no sign of relenting. 

  But for how long? How long can the chief justice and his colleagues be kept in confinement? How long can the leaders of the lawyers movement be detained? They will all be out one day. And they will neither be silent nor still. 

  They will recount the brutal treatment meted out to them for seeking the establishment of a tolerant, democratic, liberal and plural political system in Pakistan. They will state how the writ of habeas corpus was denied to them by the arbitrary and unconstitutional firing of Supreme and High Court justices. They will spell out precisely how one man set aside a Constitution under the pretext of an emergency, arrested the judges, packed the judiciary, amended the Constitution by a personal decree and then restored it to the acclaim of London and Washington. 

  They will, of course, speak then. But others are speaking now. The parliamentary elections scheduled for Jan. 8 have already been rigged, they are saying. The election commission and the caretaker cabinet are overtly partisan. The judiciary is entirely hand-picked. State resources are being spent on preselected candidates. There is a deafening uproar even though the independent news media in Pakistan are completely gagged. Can there even be an election in this environment? 

  Are they being heard? Im afraid not. 

    (Aitzaz Ahsan, a former minister of the interior and of law and justice, is the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan.) 

  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/opinion/23ahsan.html?ei=5070&en=c560e42dac0c2828&ex=1199077200&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print

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