As Reported by CNN

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan is due to appear Monday before the country’s Supreme Court, which plans to charge him with contempt in relation to a long-running struggle over old corruption cases.

Gilani is locked in a standoff with the Supreme Court justices, who are demanding that he ask the Swiss authorities to revive corruption charges from the previous decade against President Asif Ali Zardari and others.

Gilani has refused the court’s demands and could be jailed for six months if the justices find him in contempt. The court on Friday rejected an appeal by Gilani’s lawyers against the summons to face the contempt charge.

The lawyers have argued that the prime minister has not followed the court’s order because Zardari enjoys immunity in Pakistan and abroad as a president in office.

Gilani said in an interview over the weekend with the satellite news network Al Jazeera that he had an “extremely capable” lawyer and didn’t believe the court would jail him on the contempt charges.

If found guilty of contempt, the prime minister could be forced from office. But his lawyers have said he would keep his position unless electoral officials disqualified him.

Gilani served more than five years in prison between 2001 and 2006 on corruption charges brought by the previous military regime of Gen. Pervez Musharraf — counts he said were also politically motivated.

The corruption cases that the Supreme Court now wants reopened stem from money-laundering charges against Zardari and his late wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. A Swiss court convicted them in absentia in 2003 of laundering millions of dollars.

After Musharraf granted a controversial amnesty in 2007 to Zardari, Bhutto, and thousands of other politicians and bureaucrats, Pakistan asked the Swiss authorities to drop the case. In 2009, the Pakistani Supreme Court ruled the amnesty was unconstitutional and called on the government to take steps to have the cases reopened.

The government has not done so, and the court apparently lost patience. Since Gilani is the head of the government, the court justices view him as responsible.

Filed under: Democracy, Pakistan, Pakistan Army, Pakistanis Tagged: Benazir Bhutto, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Pakistan, Pakistan Supreme Court, Pervez Musharraf, President Asif Ali Zardari, Swiss Court, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani

By Alex Rodriguez for The Los Angeles Times

Dealing a heavy blow to Pakistan’s embattled government, the Supreme Court on Monday initiated contempt proceedings against Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani for refusing to revive a long-standing corruption case against the nation’s president.

Gilani, a top ally of President Asif Ali Zardari in the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, must appear before the court Thursday, when the justices will listen to his explanation for not going ahead with the case.

If the court moves forward with the contempt proceedings and Gilani is convicted, he could be disqualified from office and forced to step down. He also could be forced to serve up to six months in jail.

Zardari’s government is locked in battles with the Supreme Court and Pakistan’s powerful military, both of which have had an acrimonious relationship with the president since he took office in 2008. The crisis has stirred talk of the government’s possible ouster, though experts say it probably would happen through legal action taken by the high court rather than a military coup.

The military has ousted civilian leaders in coups four times in Pakistan’s 65-year history, but military generals have said they have no plans to mount a takeover.

Nevertheless, they were deeply angered by an unsigned memo that a Pakistani American businessman contends was engineered by a top Zardari ally to seek Washington’s help in preventing a military coup last spring. In exchange, the memo offered several concessions, including the elimination of a wing of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency that maintains links with Afghan insurgent groups.

The businessman, Mansoor Ijaz, says the then-ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani, approached him with the idea. Haqqani, who was forced to resign after the allegations surfaced, denies any involvement in the creation or conveyance of the memo. A Supreme Court commission is investigating the case, and on Monday it ordered Ijaz to come to Pakistan and appear before the panel Jan. 24.

The high court’s move to start contempt proceedings against Gilani involves money-laundering charges in Switzerland that Zardari was convicted of in absentia in 2003. The case was appealed by Zardari and his late wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and was later dropped at the request of the Pakistani government in 2008.

Since 2009, Pakistan’s high court has repeatedly ordered the government to write a letter to Swiss authorities asking that the case be reopened. Gilani and government lawyers have refused, arguing that as president, Zardari enjoys constitutional immunity from prosecution.

Last week, the court warned Gilani that it could remove him from office if he did not abide by its demand. Government lawyers were supposed to appear in court Monday and explain why Gilani’s administration had ignored the court.

Instead, Atty. Gen. Maulvi Anwarul Haq appeared before a packed courtroom and told a high court panel that the government had not given him any instructions about what to say in court. The head of the panel, Justice Nasir Mulk, said Gilani’s inaction gave the court no recourse but to pursue a contempt case against him.

Outside the courtroom, Haq said that if the court eventually issues a contempt finding against Gilani, “this conviction has ramifications…. Under the constitution, with a conviction it’s disqualification from office.”

Before the court issues its findings, it probably would hold evidentiary hearings, Haq said. If Gilani on Thursday tells the court he will ask Swiss authorities to reopen the corruption case, the justices probably would consider dropping the contempt proceeding, said Tariq Mehmood, a lawyer and retired judge.

Gilani has given no indication he plans to give in. He will, however, appear in court Thursday to explain the government’s rationale, he told parliament late Monday. “We have always respected the courts,” he said. “The court has summoned me, and in respect of the court I will go there on Jan. 19.”

Zardari’s administration hopes to become the first civilian government to finish out its term, which ends in 2013. The political turmoil may thwart that plan, as opposition leaders increasingly push harder for early elections. Though Zardari is widely criticized in Pakistan for failing to revive the country’s moribund economy and tackle corruption, his party remains confident that it can weather the storm and retain power for a second term.

Even if Gilani is removed from office, Zardari continues to hold together a coalition that controls parliament’s lower house, which elects the prime minister. On Monday, however, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, a staunch ally of the president, doubted it would come to that.

“The prime minister will stay,” Malik told reporters outside parliament. “The government is in command. Our flight may be a little bumpy, but God willing, we will have a smooth landing in 2013.”

Filed under: Afghanistan, Democracy, Pakistan, Pakistan Army, Pakistanis Tagged: Asif Ali Zardari, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Husain Haqqani, Mansoor Ijaz, Pakistan, Pakistan Peoples Party, Pakistan Supreme Court, PPP, Yousuf Raza Gilani

I still fondly remember the debates which used to rage in our English class when Hamlets beautiful soliloquy was discussed. It’s probably one of the most famous pieces of writing in English literature, being a masterpiece depiction of the inner turmoil one feels when faced with the ultimate choice, life or death.

While I would always enjoy the good humored arguments, I would also wonder how Shakespeare managed to confront poor Hamlet with such a number of moral dilemmas, and us readers with the number of possible interpretations. To choose a life with dishonor, or to fight back and risk death, with the subtle comfort of it being an honorable one? ‘To be’, meaning life, and ‘not to be’, death. Or vice versa? Or is it about bravery or cowardice?

I must now thank the honorable justices for their judgment, if that’s what it can be called, in the NRO implementation case. They have made modern day Hamlets out of all of us by gifting us a judgment which is now our sorry lot to figure out.

Given that the facts of the case were simple enough, this judgment is also a masterpiece, though more of a farcical kind. The government had refused over the past two years or so, to implement or follow in spirit, a single order of the Supreme Court regarding the NRO. Not only that, but both Messrs Zardari and Gillani had been issuing extremely controversial statements about this sub-judice case. And in the meantime senior civil servants were actively encouraged to adopt a very negative attitude towards the whole proceedings.

It would be hard to find a more clear case of contempt of court since the merry commando had troops storm the Supreme Court. Or going a little further back, when dear Nawaz Sharif had his PML goons attacked the Supreme Court building.

However our honorable justices have handed down a judgment which has made Shakespeare look positively amateurish. It’s not so much a judgment as a multiple choice examination of our cumulative legal knowledge! Instead of getting a firm judgment we have been presented with not one or two but six choices or options which these learned Judges or more of their ilk may choose from on a future date.

These range from threatening both the Prime Minister and President, options 1 & 2 as they have been naughty children, to # 3 which deals with the setting up of another commission to implement the relevant parts of this judgment! Thank you, your honors, option 3 is definitely not on. Along with the fact that your performance has almost guaranteed Shariah courts for all of us in the future, it seems to have escaped your notice that nobody could possibly understand the first judgment itself, therefore finding the relevant parts in this is likely to be an impossible task.

Option # 4, then goes and offers any of us a chance, if we happen to feel that these options impinge on any of our rights, to appear before the honorable justices. Thank you again, your honors; we, or rather our insulted intelligences, would like to let bygones be bygones. Please let us be.

Option # 5, addresses the Chairman NAB, accuses him of all manner of crimes, and then it reminds him that the commission may take action against him. May! Yes, you read right. I hope that it’s a typo in the original judgment. I also have a feeling that at least we have now one future dead duck in the shape of the Chairman NAB. Good enough of a ritual sacrifice, if you ask me.

But the best has been left to the last. Option # 6, actually informs all of us that if the bad guys, (read Messrs Zardari and Gillani) refuse to accept the courts judgment whatever it is, then in interests of not creating any undue tensions between various organs (pun unintended) of the state, the matter may be left to the discretion of the ordinary citizens i.e. you and me!

Now, my lords, this is being cheeky. Not all of us are Taliban. You cannot simply keep beating up the little boys and passing us the real big daddy. Have a heart please, and perhaps a muscle.

But the icing on the cake is at the end of the judgment. The Chief Justice has been requested to increase the number of judges hearing this case by the time of the next hearing!

I honestly think that instead of this case being heard in the court we should have handed over this whole matter to a traditional jirga or panchayat, with the honorable Chaudhry Shujat being the surpunch. I could guarantee you that with a few underage girls being married off as a token of goodwill, delivery on spot of course, along with a few billions in compensation for all those lost sugary kickbacks rights, both Zardari and Gillani would have cheerfully resigned.

This judgment is going to have very far reaching dire consequences. It has weakened the case against both the esteemed gentlemen, has opened the door for appointments in the superior judiciary itself being questioned, has further delayed the announcement of the first clear legal verdict on the whole issue, and the worst of all, has again raised the specter of nazria e zaroorat (doctrine of necessity).

When is our judiciary ever going to learn that it is there to enforce the law not dispense what it perceives as justice for all. The role of the judge is to pronounce a verdict. Its then up to the executive to enforce it or the parliament to pass appropriate legislation if they are in disagreement with either of the two. What possible ill could have arisen from pronouncing a guilty or not guilty verdict at this point of time?

Where have the justices of the caliber of Rasheed, Kiyani, Cornelius and Samdani gone? Why have we become masters of camouflaging our lack of character behind meaningless self invented and self serving philosophies?

I pity you, my lords, because you have chosen to pass the buck, whereas a little more of spine and moral courage now, would have given all of us so much more hope. I wish you all the luck, and hope that you continue to sleep well while hiding behind obscure legal precedences and taking refuge under the comfortable covers of imagined desires to do what is best for the country.

I am angry but I do understand what drove you to this. It’s a brave man or woman indeed who creates precedence. You see, the other lines from that soliloquy also now seem to have clearer meanings for me.

But that the dread of something after death,

the undiscovered country,

from whose bourn no traveler returns,

puzzles the will,

and makes us rather bear those ills we have,

then fly to others that we know not of.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.

Shakespeare could sure spot a coward. So can an ordinary Pakistani, unfortunately for you, Your honors.