As the Oct. 25 retirement date for Pakistan’s chief justice approaches, the turmoil of the past few weeks, sparked by fears that his successor will make decisions that mark the beginning of the end of the hybrid government, has reached its peak. It looks like.
Determine whether these concerns are valid or the paranoia of a regime that lacks popular support, legitimacy, and credibility due to an election in which the overall outcome may not reflect the will of voters. It’s difficult.
What is clear is that few countries would amend their constitution to address such concerns arising from the unpredictability of the actions and actions of just over six men and women. Many government politicians have described the ups and downs of the past few weeks as “the beauty of democracy”. I humbly disagree.
Let me tell you why. By the time you read these lines, either a so-called “consensus” (with the JUI-F and some smaller players) has resulted, or there will soon be a constitutional amendment passed and the Constitution will have its wings clipped. Judiciary. Or what Bilawal Bhutto Zardari called a “brutal majority with redundancies” would have produced the same result. You will agree that there is no “beauty” in such statements.
There is always a third possibility that all attempts to break the impasse will fail, stripping away the hybrid buffer and bringing the regime and at least eight judges of the Supreme Court into a direct confrontation. It’s difficult to plot how things will change from such a contingency.
If this amendment passes, the hybrid government will consider itself safe from any threat to its survival, at least in the short term.
The government continues to say it has the numbers to pass the amendment (regardless of the facts), but it wants to reach an agreement to further the cause of democracy, but the government will not get involved. Those who do have their own reasons for passing the amendment. Dialogue.
For example, PTI’s strategy is to buy time until the date changes to October 26, in the hope that a new chief justice will take office, triggering new dynamics that will ultimately lead to… It seems like it is. Overthrow this government.
They won’t really care whether this ouster is done through an electoral tribunal or somehow by annulment of the February election. As long as a new election returns Imran Khan to the Prime Minister’s Office with far more power and authority than in his previous term.
JUI-F’s Maulana Fazlur Rehman must be loving the spotlight that shines on him. When Imran Khan was prime minister with the full support of the establishment at the time, he was a loyal ally who even brought his cadre to Islamabad to ease the pressure on Nawaz Sharif and his party. Don’t forget that you were a person. However, when a new government took office after elections in February, he was treated poorly.
In Pakistani culture, small things are very important, such as participating in the wedding celebrations of each other’s close relatives, and more importantly, people are not left alone in moments of loss or grief, such as the death of an elder in the family. It is to do so. .
The PML-N and PPP were guilty of ignoring these important gestures and this must have made the Maulana feel slighted. Moreover, replacing the party’s KP gubernatorial candidate with a PPP politician would have deprived the party of the only office it could hold in the province because it has a vested interest in the province. Approval would not have been obtained.
This forced the JUI-F to take the paradoxical position of aligning itself with the PTI, which had routed the party from its stronghold in the KP. There is no denying that Mr. Maulana has taken a fairly consistent democratic stand, with the only drawback being that he forced his party to vote for General Musharraf.
As the last few lines of this column were being completed, a five-member PTI team that had met party founder Imran Khan at Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail emerged from a meeting where Khan told his team members that Maulana He told the media that he had instructed him to continue his relationship with the company. About this important bill.
At the same time, PPP leader Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, along with JUI chief negotiator Kamran Murtaza, told the media in front of Maulana’s home in Islamabad that the two parties had agreed on an amended draft that was also supported by the PML-N. Ta. And PTI needs to decide what it wants to do.
PTI’s time-buying strategy appears to have run its course and perhaps in the future JUI-F and PTI may part ways over how to vote and support amendments. Naturally, there will be a lot of misalignment between the cup and the lip. And the work isn’t done until it’s done.
If this amendment were to pass, the hybrid government would think it would remove all threats to its existence, at least in the short term. The long term is another story. So far, Imran Khan does not seem to have succumbed to the pressure of numerous trials and imprisonment.
There is no doubt that he continues to enjoy huge support across the country. So far, this support has not been able to build enough pressure from the streets to release him or seriously challenge those at the helm.
In our experience, even the smallest spark can set off an effective snowball that forces change. With no way to return to power through the legal system, the PTI’s only bet is that its large support base will one day accomplish something great.
The author is a former editor of Dawn.
abbas.nasir@hotmail.com
Published at Dawn on October 20, 2024
