Gilani's ifs and buts

If Law Minister Babar Awan's version on the Swiss cases is required by the Supreme Court, then why not of former president Pervez Musharraf's, who is the "architect" of the infamous National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), so says Prime Minister Gilani. Of course his high office tends to moderate the diction of his expression, but his words do betray the gripes afflicting the government.
The law minister would have been the last person to appear before the apex court - recall his 'over my dead body' challenge - but sanity (read fear of incurring the court's contempt charge) seems to have finally prevailed. Babar Awan would stand before the court this week to explain as to why the government has not yet implemented its order to write a letter to the Swiss government to reopen the cases of corruption against President Zardari and others.
Then, there is also the queer interpretation as to why the then-ruling coalition had endorsed the NRO: Gilani says the Shujaat-led PML (Q) government had cowered under General Musharraf's threat that if 'you didn't approve the NRO, Benazir Bhutto would become prime minister for the third time'. But he is right to the extent that "neither the PPP nor the PML (N) played any significant role in the removal of Pervez Musharraf, as he was sent packing because of pressure of the international community".
Just one more twist to the tale: PM Gilani then goes on to say that it was Benazir Bhutto who had convinced the world community that dictatorship couldn't solve Pakistan's internal and external issues. So, Prime Minister Gilani would like the Supreme Court to summon former president Musharraf and make him stand in the dock next to his law minister.
Is he serious and honest in what he was telling journalists in Lahore? Revisiting the events that preceded Pervez Musharraf's resignation and his ceremonious departure last year makes some instructive reading. The fact is that without the NRO, contrived by the benevolent assistance of some important international guarantors in active connivance of the PPP and PML (N) - at one stage, even the present army chief was an interlocutor in the Benazir-Musharraf parleys - the PPP would not have been in power today.
No wonder then, according to a Reuters report, Prime Minister Gilani government was prepared to give the dictator a "very dignified" exit and that was given. The guard of honour and other pomp and show that highlighted his departure ceremony, at the Presidency, in no way suggests that the Gilani government would have wanted him to be held responsible for anything including the subversion of the Constitution, much less seeking his version on the NRO in the Supreme Court.
What to say of the past, even today the former president enjoys full security cover sanctioned by the present government and paid for by the people of Pakistan. The irony is that the net beneficiary of the NRO is not Pervez Musharraf, the so-called "architect" of the notorious law, but the PPP, PML (N), ANP and MQM, the principal parties who are ruling the roost.
If the government is in a clash with the superior judiciary today, this is fundamentally because of the annulment of the NRO. Law Minister Babar Awan's legal trickery has put the Gilani government on a collision path with the apex court.
One would have expected of the prime minister to order full compliance with the verdict of the apex court, including prompt dispatch of a letter to the Swiss government to reopen the cases of corruption against President Zardari. May be there is no case against President Zardari, who knows. A Zardari, acquitted by the court, would certainly make much better ranking in history than one stonewalled by an obdurate government, whose very reluctance to face the law earns him the stigma of guilt.