Faisal Mahmood/Reuters
Police in Islamabad outside the Supreme Court building, where Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani testified last Thursday.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan ? Once they were heroes, cloaked justices at the vanguard of a powerful revolt against military rule in Pakistan, buoyed by pugnacious lawyers and an adoring public. But now Pakistan?s Supreme Court is waging a campaign of judicial activism that has pitted it against an elected civilian government, in a legal fight that many Pakistanis fear could damage their fragile democracy and open the door to a fresh military intervention.
Aamir Qureshi/Agence France-Presse ? Getty Images
Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry is the Supreme Court's iron-willed chief justice.
From an imposing, marble-clad court on a hill over Islamabad, and led by an iron-willed chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the judges have since 2009 issued numerous rulings that have propelled them into areas traditionally dominated by government here. The court has dictated the price of sugar and fuel, championed the rights of transsexuals, and, quite literally, directed the traffic in the coastal megalopolis of Karachi.
But in recent weeks the court has taken interventionism to a new level, inserting itself as the third player in a bruising confrontation between military and civilian leaders at a time when Pakistan ? and the United States ? urgently needs stability in Islamabad to face a dizzying array of threats.
Judges say their expanded mandate comes from the people, dating back to the struggle against the military rule of Gen. Pervez Musharraf that began in 2007, eventually helping to pry him from power. Memories linger of those heady days, when bloodied lawyers clashed with riot police officers, and judges were garlanded and paraded as virtual saints.
In recent months, however, the Supreme Court has ventured deep into political peril in two different cases. Last week, as part of a high-stakes corruption case, it summoned Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to testify in court under threat of contempt charges that, if carried to conviction, could leave him jailed and ejected from office.
The court has also begun an inquiry into a scandal known here as Memogate, a shadowy affair with touches of soap-opera drama that has engulfed the political system since November. It has claimed the job of Pakistan?s ambassador to the United States and now threatens other senior figures in the civilian government, under accusations that officials sought American help to head off a potential military coup.
Propelled by accounts of secret letters, text messages and military plots, the scandal has in recent days focused on a music video featuring bikini-clad female wrestlers that is likely to be entered as evidence of immorality on the part of the central protagonist, Mansoor Ijaz, an American businessman of Pakistani origin.
Hearings resume Tuesday when Mr. Ijaz is due to give evidence. The fact that the courts have become the arena for such lurid political theater has reignited criticism, some from once-staunch allies, that the Supreme Court is worryingly overstepping its mark.
?In the long run this is a very dangerous trend,? said Muneer A. Malik, a former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association who campaigned for Justice Chaudhry in 2007. ?The judges are not elected representatives of the people and they are arrogating power to themselves as if they are the only sanctimonious institution in the country. All dictators fall prey to this psyche ? that only we are clean, and capable of doing the right thing.?
The court?s supporters counter that it is reinforcing democracy in the face of President Asif Ali Zardari?s corrupt and inept government. On Saturday, Justice Chaudhry pushed back against the critics.
The court?s goal was to ?buttress democratic and parliamentary norms,? he told a gathering of lawyers in Karachi. Deep-rooted corruption was curtailing justice in Pakistan, he added.
?Destiny of our institution is in our own hands,? he said.
Mr. Chaudhry was appointed to the Supreme Court under General Musharraf in 2000. Two years later he wrote a judgment that absolved the military ruler for his 1999 coup. But Mr. Chaudhry shocked his patron and his country seven years later with decrees that challenged General Musharraf?s pre-eminence. Senior security officials were ordered to track down individuals being illegally held by the military intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, in some cases working with the F.B.I. and C.I.A. The privatization of state companies came under sharp scrutiny.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=db0dcea5723f19bea47c8841266e2814
abc world news theme abc world news this morning abc world news today abc world news tonight abc world news tonight anchor
No comments:
Post a Comment