Spotlight: Gunning for the CJP gathering pace?: Nawaz Sharif's favourite perch: On the fence

"PML-N Chief Nawaz Sharif has urged the government "not to get passed the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) by the Parliament" according to a recent newspaper report. What does Sharif actually want? Does he mean that the Parliament should reject the NRO? Well, not exactly. The report continues the quote to say "the government should avoid putting the Parliament, opposition and itself to test".
Reading between the lines, this means 'do not subject the Parliament to the test of a vote one way or another on NRO'. I think the two statements attributed to Nawaz Sharif clearly define his whole approach to politics and governance. I am sure many in PML-N would like the party to oppose and vote against the NRO.
If the Parliament were to pass the NRO bill, PML-N's opposition notwithstanding, then so be it. People will know who among the parties stands where. But their (PML-N people's) wish may not be granted given the fact that their Chief has been quite consistent in refusing to "stand up and be counted" on any issue of importance in recent months.
Sharif, to give one example, keeps harping on the imperative need on the part of Asif Zardari to keep his promise regarding the implementation of the Charter of Democracy, but only uses the demand, once a quarter or so, as a stick to beat the President and the PPP government with. He refuses in effect to force the issue by giving a reasonable deadline or to bring a resolution before the Parliament and to let each party stand up and be counted on what it really stands for or to take the issue to the public as the last political choice.
His party (PML-N) has also in effect gone hand in glove with the ruling party with respect to repealing the 17th amendment. The committee set up for the purpose was formed after some eight weeks of discussion. It then took weeks to decide its own terms of reference. Then more weeks passed before it held its first working meeting and so on.
The goal appears to be (clearly by choice) ever receding. What does PML-N do? It sits, in practical terms, like a lamb in the parliament, despite all the loud rhetoric by Nisar Ali Khan and lets Asif Zardari have his way in turning days of delay into weeks and months of delay and more in moving on a matter which he had promised as the first thing he would settle on moving into the Presidency. But that is another disgraceful story.
And what about bringing ex-President Musharraf to book, a subject which has been something of an enduring obsession with Nawaz Sharif with even a visible emotional dimension to it? Why was not proportionally loud noise made about it by his party in the Parliament with practical steps to match?
The flimsy excuse for not bringing a resolution calling for Musharraf's trial, given by some party leaders was that in case the resolution failed to muster the required support (in view of deals made) it would amount to a set back for the cause of ever bringing the ex-President to book on treason charges! So what, we would like to say! Why sweep things under the carpet? Why let those playing double games hide themselves and their true colors behind smokescreens.
Let the people know loud and clear what each party stands for on the issue. If there are any secret agreements with internal and external power brokers involved, let it all come to light.
This country has already suffered much and its people hoodwinked too often by "deals" and secret understandings, be they the deal between Benazir and Musharraf under American tutelage, or the deal which let Nawaz Sharif out of prison into the royal lap in Saudi Arabia, or the deal which let Musharraf leave the Presidency in grand style or the deal about Drone flights and so on.
And what about the Kerry-Luger bill? The initial noise and fury about the bill raised by Nawaz Sharif and his party stalwarts, appears to be dissipating into nothingness since there is no move yet from the "main opposition party" to requisite a session of the Parliament to discuss the Bill and force a vote on it. It was left to Jamaat-i-Islami, a party with no representation in Parliament, to mobilise public opinion against the Bill through a public referendum.
The referendum was not about Jamaat-i-Islami but about an issue which has rightly caught public imagination. Now that the Cabinet has formally "cleared" the Bill (as expected), it remains to be seen what the parties in Parliament especially PML-N are likely to do, if anything, about it.
I think Nawaz Sharif suffers from and is deluded by a false sense of the popularity his person and policies enjoy among the people of this country. The poll figures, which show his popularity at sixty percent or so compared with President Zardari's at around twenty five percent, may have deluded him into thinking that he has only to sit tight like a Buddha and like a ripe fruit, political power would fall into his lap.
Nothing is farther from the truth. His sixty percent are a measure of popular rejection of the present government at the centre and its policies rather than a measure of how well his politics or person is liked by the people. The sooner he realises this, the better it will be for the future of his party and his own.
A change in the political power equation which appears possible, even if not very likely in the very short term, could suddenly, in not too distant future, confront him with his moment of truth, which may not prove to be his moment of comfort.
GOING AFTER THE CJP In a recent Spotlight column we had wondered aloud if knives are out for CJP Chaudhry. The misgiving arose because of a sudden adverse and one-sided discussion on a TV channel in which the anchor person, forgetting his function proper, had also joined with the panellists, all without any exception, gunning for the CJP.
This was hardly surprising. In fact the surprise lay in the fact that the presumed attack was so late in coming! The reason is not far to seek. Given the fact that in his characteristic single-minded, no-nonsense style, the CJP with his new and inspired judiciary, was going after too many wrongdoers at the same time and stepping on too many toes in the process, many offenders would be very happy to see harm come to him and his crusade against crime.
Be it the sugar issue in which several big names, exposed for the first time, are in the glare of the disapproving public eye, or conditions in our jails where petty criminals have already spent long periods in jail waiting for the cases to be processed and concluded, or the scandal of a drunken doctor in a public hospital, or cases of police highhandedness or corruption in the judiciary itself, or delays in deciding cases before the courts, or taking suo motu actions in the case of the helpless and the downtrodden (there are so many in our society, Allah knows), CJP and his men are devoting more time and energy (despite being severely short-handed at the time, following the cleanup process in the judiciary itself), than the Judiciary in this country ever did, to setting wrongs right and to calling to account whosoever might be responsible.
Rumblings against the CJP that he is infringing on responsibilities that are in the area of the Parliament or the Executive have started becoming more audible and more frequent, though in each case, the judiciary has moved only for the common good and where the Parliament and the Executive are clearly seen abdicating their constitutional role and responsibility.
These thoughts come to mind when reading about the reported onslaught by Latif Khosa (PPP stalwart and recently sacked Attorney General) against the person and conduct of the CJP. The stories that provide the prelude to Khosa's attack on the CJP, as reported in the press, run somewhat like this: Latif Khosa, while he was Attorney General, had also started pleading cases for Public Sector companies (OGDC for one) for hefty fees.
Khosa said he had a right to do so whereas others felt this was not a fair practice for an Attorney General, appointed and paid a salary by the Government. He was also accused of being lukewarm in defending the Government in some cases before the restored Supreme Court.
It was said that he failed to present the government viewpoint in politically important cases like imposition of governor's rule in Punjab and the National Reconciliation Ordinance before the Supreme Court in a proper way. Whatever the cause, he was fired earlier this month as Attorney General by the President (though he continues to function as the PM's advisor).
More seriously, he was accused by Hamid Meghfur Shah, a NAB convict, of having received a bribe of Rs 3 million from him with a promise that he would get the Supreme Court, then under PCO CJP Dogar, to reverse the NAB decision under which he had been awarded a prison sentence and fine.
But this did not happen. Khosa is also accused of having offered Rs 6 mln to his accuser if he withdrew his accusation. This case is now before the Supreme Court. Khosa has made much of his "contribution in blood" to the cause of the Judiciary but conveniently skips over the fact that he had begun to distance himself from and finally broken with it and opposed it once PPP had formed its government.
However, this is not a Khosa story but a CJP story. Khosa figures in this because of the vitriol in his outburst against the CJP during the Supreme Court hearing against him and the stinging attack against the CJP who he accused, during a court hearing, of having got him (the AG) sacked from his position. "Why did you get me removed from the office of attorney general?" asked he point blank in an affront rarely seen in the highest judicial body proceedings in the country.
"If the chief justice starts acting out of vendetta", Khosa is reported to have said, "what can the people do." Recalling an earlier incident Khosa also said in his tirade "I was disgraced by some so-called lawyers in Pearl Continental Lahore in front of you, but you kept smiling instead of stopping them". Khosa's request for an in-camera hearing was refused by the CJP because of allegations of bribe-taking by judges as also his demand that the CJP should not hear his case.
Coming after the TV discussion attacking the CJP and Fauzia Wahab's 'speechifying' asking any one who would listen "Who is the Supreme Court to tell the Parliament what to do or what not to do?", on the top of several cases launched in the Supreme Court by ex-judges affected by the Supreme Court's historic 31 July decision, one wonders if a plot is underway to discredit the CJP one way or another and if Khosa's unprecedented outburst against a CJP is just another part of an orchestrated plan. ([email protected])