[vinnomot] Judiciary lets Pakistan down

SAN-Feature Service

SOUTH ASIAN NEWS-FEATURE SERVICE

October 1,2007

 

Judiciary lets Pakistan down

 

By washing its hands of the petitions challenging President Pervez Musharraf's eligibility to contest the October 6 presidential election while remaining army chief, Pakistan's Supreme Court avoided a head-on collision with the military ruler but left the problem intact.

 

SAN-Feature Service : By washing its hands of the petitions challenging President Pervez Musharraf's eligibility to contest the October 6 presidential election while remaining army chief, Pakistan's Supreme Court avoided a head-on collision with the military ruler but left the problem intact. The nine-judge bench ruled by a majority of six to three that the petitions were based on a faulty constitutional premise and were therefore not maintainable in the highest court.

 

Consequentially, the verdict allows him to contest the election. The cop-out was not unexpected. It was foretold in the September 10 deportation of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the face of the Chief Justice's order that the government should ensure his return. The regime's message to the judges was that it would act in its own interests come what may. General Musharraf's undertaking to the court early in the two-week hearing of these petitions that he would step down as army chief if he was elected President for another term raised the prospect of confrontation if the bench did not permit him to contest the election. The possibility that he might ignore an adverse ruling, opt for emergency or even martial law may have played on the minds of the judges.

 

As the decision of the bench did not deal with the merits of the petition, the key issues raised — the legality of his dual offices, of the legislation that permitted him to hold two offices at the same time, and of his candidature under those laws for election to another term as President while retaining the post of army chief — are still up in the air. The case showed up the judiciary's limitations in resolving political problems but in the present situation there seems no escape for the Supreme Court. It will face these questions again when the opposition candidates in the election knock on its door challenging General Musharraf's candidature. At least one of them, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, entered the race only for this purpose. General Musharraf does look set to get another term as President. But with the opposition threatening to resign en masse from the electoral college, and the credibility and legitimacy of the election in doubt and under litigation, Pakistan will continue to remain in ferment — even if he keeps his promise to quit as army chief. Saturday's protests by the legal community and the violent crackdown by law-enforcers were a foretaste of things to come. Parliamentary elections, which are next, will not solve the general's problems.—SAN-Feature Service

 

 

An editorial of the India's national newspaper THE HINDU on October 1, 2007

 

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