War of references

There may be a method in this madness we don't know yet, but, on the face of it, the war between the government and the opposition is widening by the day. Parliamentary references seeking membership disqualification seem to be emerging as the new battle-front.
After holding out for a week the National Assembly Speaker Amir Hussain has sent two references, one filed by the MQM and the other by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan, seeking disqualification of Imran Khan, to the Chief Election Commissioner. Amir Hussain found the references against the Tehrik-e-Insaf chief "prima facie in order" and his decision was "in accordance with my wisdom and in all honesty".
Why the Speaker, who has earned the singular distinction of being subjected to two motions of no-confidence during one term, did not dump the references against Imran Khan, as he did with about half a dozen others that lie catching dust on his table, is a question for historians to seek answer to.
However, in a tit-for-tat move the opposition on Thursday moved for disqualification of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz for his alleged corruption in the stock market crisis and privatisation of Pakistan Steel, which was found illegal by the Supreme Court. Similar references against a few other government leaders cannot be ruled out.
Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution deal with qualifications and disqualifications for membership of the assemblies and Senate. While Article 62 covers conditions for valid candidature and is essentially a pre-election legal framework, to be enforced by election tribunals, the second, Article 63, spells out disqualifications of intending as well as sitting members. If a sitting member of the National Assembly incurs application of Article 63, the Speaker refers the case within 30 days to the Chief Election Commissioner, who, in turn, will lay it before the Election Commission for decision within three months.
What would happen to these references is in the realm of conjecture, but in the meanwhile the parties for and against the references would furiously contend with each other, often spilling out juicy details, and capture a lot of media space and time.
That perhaps is the method in this madness, a perfect example of psychological warfare, to divert public attention from the 'mother of all references' - the presidential reference which has precipitated the worst political crisis for President Pervez Musharraf.
The kind of civil society based defiance the presidential reference against Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry provoked, was beyond anybody's calculation in the President's camp. Never before in the history of Pakistan had the legal community put up such a resistance to the ever-domineering Establishment, turning the suspension of the Chief Justice into a powerful movement for restoration of civil order in the country.
The political opposition that had tried for years to put the government on the defensive lost no time in cashing in on this Godsend. And, as the Chief Justice took to the road the "Karvan Banta Gaya", bringing into the drawing rooms the 'making of a revolution' thanks to live coverage by independent television channels.
Pundits who advise the government must have been shocked. As a countermove they seemed to have acted on three fronts. Firstly, a spate of rumours started buffeting the media centres with reports of cabinet reshuffles and other high-level bureaucratic changes. Names of new prime ministers replacing Shaukat Aziz kept popping up, but as we know three months later it is the same cabinet under the same old Shaukat Aziz.
One more, hopefully the last, wave of possible change of face in the prime minister house is expected to hit the place over the weekend when the federal budget is passed.
Early dissolution of the National Assembly to make way for the interim caretaker government was the second strand of the 'empire strikes back' strategy. Various combinations of caretaker set-up were bandied around, only to be scotched by vociferous announcements coming from close to the original sources that the present assemblies would complete their tenures.
Then, thirdly, came, perhaps without design, the Election Commission's contribution to this attention-diversion game plan: the provisional voter lists they put on display are so far removed from reality on the ground that they tend to fuel fears if elections are coming at all.
Will the war of references help divert public attention from the judicial crisis? No The issue now before the Supreme Court is too fundamental to move into oblivion once the full bench will have spoken on it. Whatever the direction of that their judgement it would draw new parameters and set new rules for the game, the play called 'Who Will Rule Pakistan'.
Filing references against political adversaries is a meaningless exercise, given that the institutions that have to adjudicate upon it, have no credibility in the eyes of the people. And, where is the time to get lost in these side-shows?