Pakistan conundrum
ACQUISITION and use of ethical competence in national and international affairs are being insisted upon now by global actors as the definition of national sovereignty underwent sea changes in the latter part of the 20th century. It is now recognised that political actors must have ethical skill -- i.e. skill necessary to protect freedom and diversity in the modern world -- in dealing with nationals of their own countries, and be accountable to the people.
As the earth is becoming flatter by the day despite the gulf reflected at the Copenhagen climate conference between the developed and the developing worlds, authoritarian/totalitarian rule is no longer acceptable to the international community if a country is to be regarded as a responsible member of the global comity of nations. This insistence on respect for law by all citizens in society, translated through punishment in case of waywardness by political leaders, as in the case of others, forms the core of ethical behaviour.
The Pakistan Supreme Court's decision to strike down the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) that had given amnesty to slain Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, President Asif Ali Zardari and many others who were accused of corruption, embezzlement, money laundering and other crimes between January 1, 1986, and October 12, 1999 -- the time between two periods of martial law -- has thrown the country into chaos.
The NRO was framed under pressure from the United States and Britain in order to allow assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to return to Pakistan for elections on a power-sharing basis with then military ruler Parvez Musharraf. The validation of the NRO by the Parliament, for it to become a law, was opposed by most of the political parties in Pakistan. It fell upon the Supreme Court to declare the NRO null and void, as if the ordinance had never been promulgated.
President Zardari retains his immunity from prosecution as long as he holds the office of the president. The Pakistan People's Party has decided to fight the corruption charges levelled against its members in court. Reacting to the Supreme Court ruling, the chief minister of Sindh warned against trampling of the mandate of the people and the Assemblies that elected Asif Zardari as the president of Pakistan.
He questioned the motive of the people now calling for Zardari's resignation on moral grounds and saw it as a conspiracy against Sindh, reflected in the execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and now the campaign against Zardari. He wanted to know why these people were silent when Zardari was filing his nomination papers, and after Nawaz Sharif's conviction in a corruption case and his exile to Saudi Arabia under an arrangement similar to the NRO.
The Supreme Court's ruling brings to the surface the eternal debate on separation of powers among the three wings of the state. Abraham Lincoln in his first inaugural address, admitting the power of the US Supreme Court on constitutional questions, stated that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people was to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, "the instant they are made the people would have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
Oregon Governor Sylvester Pennoyer in 1887, in an address to the State Legislative Assembly, said that if the courts possessed the power to nullify a law of the legislature by a judicial order, then the legislative and the judicial branches were not coordinate branches and the legislative branch was subordinate to the judicial. Adding that judges, like legislators, were men and as such fallible, they were as liable to violate the constitution as the legislators.
A former Indian chief justic, A.S. Anand, advised caution to ensure that judicial activism did not become judicial adventurism because, otherwise, it might lead to chaos and people would not know which organ of the state to look to, to stop abuse or misuse of power. On the other hand, the tyranny of the majority can be instituted through an open, free and fair election that Samuel Huntington thinks to be the essence of democracy.
But tyranny of the majority can be avoided through "coherent majoritarianism," which requires not simply the most votes that signal legitimate outcome but the most votes produced by the best arguments. "The means by which a majority comes to be a majority," writes John Dewy "is the important thing: antecedent debates, the modification of views to meet the opinion of the minority… The essential need, in other words, is the improvement in the methods and the conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion."
The situation Pakistan faces is more the threat emanating from terrorism than the corruption in high places that Pakistanis, like the citizens of many Third World countries, are used to living with. The global war against terror will not abate, regardless of the cost to Pakistan. The question facing Pakistan today is not whether to keep on a "tainted" president but whether fighting the Taliban has a higher priority than having a president who may have considerably lost his popularity. While the issue at hand is purely for the Pakistanis to decide, a destabilised Pakistan with its international security ramifications has to be taken into account.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments