Think before you leap

By fixing June 10, good three weeks away from now, as the day for the 'long march' in support of deposed judges' reinstatement, the All Pakistan Lawyers Representative Convention has shown its determination to go ahead for the final showdown with the government.
But it also gives the government sufficient time to do the needful to defuse the crisis that tends to set the elected leadership on a collision course with the civil society. The convention also set up a committee which would prepare the programme for the march, particularly the routes its rallies would take.
These may not converge at the Army House in Rawalpindi, where President Musharraf presently resides, as a destination marked by Aitzaz Ahsan, but there is no doubt that these would be a massive show of strength, even when the long march would be undertaken under the high noon sun of June.
While the PPP says the lawyers' rallies would not be obstructed, PML (N) has promised to be the "part and parcel" of the rallies with Nawaz Sharif riding the "judicial bus". The APDM leaders are also gearing up to jump on the bandwagon of the long march. But, thanks to the pressure raised by the long march threat, the laws ministry is burning the mid-night oil to offer an alternative by way of a constitutional package which is likely to be tabled in the parliament later this week as the Eighteenth Amendment.
On the face of it, the draft of the constitutional amendment, a few salient features of which were made public by Law Minster Farooq Naek on Monday, does not envisage a separate action in the form of a parliamentary resolution for reinstatement of deposed judges.
It is principally based on the Charter of Democracy former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif signed in 2006, much before the issue of deposed judges erupted on the national scene, as against the PML (N)'s insistence that constitutional package should come after the resolution has been adopted and judges restored.
Otherwise, the PML (N) has threatened not to support the parliamentary indemnity of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) which too seems to be made part of the constitutional package. But in this threat, there is the flexibility shown by the PML (N) that it would be willing to make the resolution a part of the package. A major upshot likely to emerge from the exercise would be a drastic cut in the powers of the President, probably more cutting than the Amendment.
Not only would the President lose his power to dissolve the National Assembly under Article 58 2(b) he would be also shorn of his power to appoint services' chiefs, judges of superior courts and Chief Election Commissioner.
But there is something in the package that the presidency would like to draw comfort from and it is that President Pervez Musharraf would escape the applicability of Article 6. In fact, a follow-up legal provision to Article 6 was never legislated making penalty under Article 6 unavailable. That is being done under the proposed package, with prospective effect which spares the present incumbent. But the scope of the said article is being expanded to superior judges in line with the Charter of Democracy.
The PPP leadership is trying hard to bring the PML (N) on board. In case, it fails, the PPP can still get the package through the parliament given that the PML (Q) would be willing to bail it out if by that it could drive a sharp edge between the principal coalition partners. But the bill as reported by the media still misses the core issue and that is the reinstatement of judges to their November 2, 2007 position.
Unless it is said that the PPP is working against its élan and its philosophy it is inconceivable to see it standing on the wrong side of the civil society, legal fraternity and other segments of intelligentsia. That calls for a direct liaison between the government and the lawyers' leadership before the package for amending the constitution is tabled in the parliament. In reality it is an issue of discontent between the PPP-headed government and the legal community. They must come to an understanding; the PML (N)'s stand is only a shadow play of the lawyers' movement.
Meanwhile, the lawyers' committee may decide to march onto the parliament house instead of Army House in Rawalpindi unless they are thinking of a revolution. Let there be more dialogue between the government and the lawyers' leaders.