ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court accepted on Friday Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif’s petition on the ‘memogate’ issue and set up a judicial commission comprising chief justices of three high courts to investigate the scandal. Announcing a unanimous verdict of the nine-judge SC bench, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry observed: “To delineate measures to [...]

By Salman Masood for The New York Times

The military command in Pakistan issued an unusual refutation on Friday of rumors that it was planning to take power, publicizing a pledge by the top general that it is committed to democracy a day after the prime minister warned of conspiracies to subvert the civilian government.

But the pledge, by Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, did little to assuage anxieties about a possible coup in a country with a history of military interventions. The anxieties were reinforced on Thursday by an extraordinary outburst about just such a possibility from the normally soft-spoken prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, who also said the military generals in Pakistan behaved as though they were “a state within a state” and that they should be accountable to Parliament.

“The army will continue to support democratic process in the country,” General Kayani was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the military command. It said General Kayani had made that pledge on Thursday as he visited troops stationed in the northwestern regions of Mohmand and Kurram.

General Kayani “dispelled the speculations of any military takeover and said that these are misleading and are being used as a bogey to divert the focus from the real issues,” according to the statement by the military.

However, General Kayani stressed that “there can be no compromise on national security,” alluding to the differences with the civilian government over investigations into a contentious memo that suggested the civilian government had sought help from the United States in trying to constrain the Pakistani military.

The public back-and-forth came as the Pakistan military’s relations with the United States, already aggravated by the memo issue, have plunged to new lows over a deadly American-led airstrike on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border last month that killed 26 Pakistani soldiers. Pakistan’s military has rejected results of a Pentagon inquiry that said both sides were at fault but that Pakistani forces opened fire first. In a new sign of the Pakistani military’s anger, a senior official said Friday it had canceled a planned visit by the head of the United States Central Command, Gen. James Mattis, to brief his counterparts on the Pentagon inquiry.

The tensions over the memo began after Mansoor Ijaz, an American businessman of Pakistani origin, wrote an op-ed article for The Financial Times in October saying that a Pakistani diplomat had asked him to deliver a memo to Adm. Mike Mullen, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, after American commandos killed Osama bin Laden in a May raid on a Pakistan safe house. That raid, which deeply embarrassed Pakistan, raised questions about whether Bin Laden, the most-wanted fugitive Al Qaeda plotter of the Sept. 11 attacks, had been protected by elements of Pakistan’s military and intelligence service. Mr. Ijaz described the memo as saying that the civilian government sought help in preventing a possible coup, offering in exchange to dismantle part of the intelligence service.

Since then, the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party and the powerful military have been arguing over the veracity of the memo , which is seen as authentic by the military and as a conspiracy by the civilian government.

Husain Haqqani, the former ambassador to the United States, was forced to resign in November after allegations that he had orchestrated the memo, a charge he denies. Mr. Haqqani returned to the country and is barred from traveling abroad, a step seen as a violation of his fundamental rights, according to his lawyer.

The top generals have urged the country’s Supreme Court to investigate the origins of the memo. Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry said Friday that the court is pursuing those investigations but that it would not validate any army coup.

The statements by both Mr. Gilani and General Kayani signified that deep mistrust and tensions exist between the two sides.

“Things don’t look stable at all,” said Enver Baig, a former senator, who predicted that the “civil-military relations will not settle down peacefully.”

Filed under: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Pakistan Army, Pakistanis, United States, US Army Tagged: Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Mansoor Ijaz, Mike Mullen, Pakistan, Pakistani Army, Pakistanis, Yusuf Raza Gillani

Chief Justice of Pakistan: over-enthusiastic about some issues?

Today’s headline and report in Express Tribune ‎”Citizen’s letter prompts notices to president, ISI chief”  prompts advocate Asad Jamal in Lahore to ask, rightly, who is this “Canada-based Pakistani” Shafqatullah Sohail ‘who has written such a passionate letter that the CJP immediately converted it into a petition?
Interestingly, and intriguingly, the letter takes care of the questions raised as to the maintainability of memo case petitions which the drafters of first nine petitions could not carefully attend to. In his petition he says that committees could delay the outcome of the probe into the memo affair and that he feared for the life of his family because he felt the government could invite “enemies to kill us”.’

Daily Times ’has got it even better’: Mr. Shafqatullah Sohail has said in his petition: “My family members are in the army and all family members are in Pakistan, therefore, I am feeling insecure from this government because they could invite our enemies to kill us”.

Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry directed that this application should be treated as a petition under Article 184(3) as prima facie in this matter a threat to the security of Pakistan/citizens had been alleged, reports The News. Canadian citizen Shafqatullah Sohail had sent a letter to the chief justice on November 19, saying that “the memo issue was directly related to the security of Pakistan and the armed forces of Pakistan, therefore it was a matter of national security and national interest.”

“This conversion (of the letter into a petition) shows just how hellbent the CJP is to violate the constitution,” tweeted advocate Yasser Latif Hamdani (@therealYLH). “Human rights petition for a canadian resident? But no human rights petition for Ahmadis who are expelled from schools?”

“We should petition the CJ to take suo moto notice of ISI as a threat to Pakistan,” added journalist Fifi Haroon (@fifiharoon).

Good to learn just now that some people are already working along these lines. Watch this space.

LAHORE POST

Whatever the arguments to the contrary that the media and legal wizards might like to forward, no answer has yet been found to this question being asked by common citizens for the last six plus decades as to why the country has not yet been able to build up a failsafe system of proving the allegations in judicial forums against the corrupt, the plunderers, the terrorists and hardened criminals and desperadoes.

In plain words, it simply means why it is so that the wrongdoers whose evil credentials are known to the entire society and the people in their neighbourhood and even in other towns and villages, are most often pronounced innocent on the basis of scanty or no-evidence.

Does the evidence evaporate in thin air? And if at all, it has to evaporate in thin air, why it is so that the culprits get scot-free in more than two-third of cases instituted against them under the Pakistan Penal Code or other laws in force including the infamous Anti-Terrorism Act and the practically crippled Anti-Corruption Act known as 5(2) 47 in legal jargon, since this Act dates back to the year 1947 and 5 ( 2) are its provisions dealing with acts of corruption committed by people in position of authority.

People are not so naïve to ask this question which is an exceptionally valid question because this sorry state of affairs in our system has brought sufferings in the lives of millions of people. Moreover, the people draw comparison with the legal systems of other countries of the world where proving a wrongdoer wrong is not an impossibility as it so happens in majority of cases in our country.

However, now people have started hoping lot of improvement following the emergence of judicial activism inspired by Chief Justice, Mr Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who has rectified many errors in the system.

But most of the people are still not easily willing to accept the declaration made so vehemently by the House of Sharifs especially its scion in real power (Punjab is still deemed to be the hub of power), Mian Shahbaz Sharif, that ‘those having doubts about our assets, should prove it in the court’.

The underlying belief -or misconception- is that in our country there can be proof of honest means but no proof of dishonest means of income that include tax evasion, under-invoicing, power pilferage, regular bribes given to functionaries from different departments who happen to be on the regular payroll of some enterprising entrepreneurs to help them out in moments of distress (including financial distress).

This ‘proving-and-’proof’ business has also become a commonplace thing following the frequent statements of PM Syed Yusuf Raza Gillani and many of his partymen whose rhetoric ‘go to the courts if you’ve any evidence against us’, has become a routine gossip.

Anyway, it is a moment of delight for the masses that their supremos have at last realized the significance of presenting themselves and their assets’ details before the public, through media. Even if these presentations contain half-truth, some kind of benefit of doubt must be given to the leaders undergoing this realization.

Perhaps they have played the right cards at the right time. At least now one can guess that their assets are in safe hands. For sure, this is no allusion to the strategic assets being in safe hands, since safe hands protecting the vital or national strategic assets can go unsafe once the half truth turns out to be a total lie. So, the politicians at the helm of affairs better abandon the rhetoric ‘go to the courts’ and instead start treading the fair path.

A day before writing these lines, I’ve, however, received a communication from one Ejaz Khan of Lahore. It goes like this, “I have gone through your column titled ‘Budha in CM’s casing’ in ‘The News’ a few days back. Besides other things, it mentions the transparent methods resorted to by the Sharif family for the purchase of land for their Jati Umra palace at a time when Mian Nawaz Sharif was the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Through this letter, however, I want to point out that some officials of Punjab government including the TMA Iqbal Town functionaries and police officers, from SHO to the SP levels, are frequently sending sugar-coated but really threatening messages to the local agro-based industrialists who also earn foreign exchange and are doing business according to rules and regulations and standard practices just in the close neighbourhood of Jati Umra. On the face of it, the industrialist-hunting) is being done under the garb of rules which, according to my information, are being followed by these businesses but the real story is that some under-the-surface move is going on to intimidate the industrialists and show them the door and expand the palaces at lower-than-the-market land prices’.

Following this communication, a little probe was conducted. It was revealed that SHO Raiwind City Operations, Lahore has, through a cop deputed for this purpose, summoned some agro-based industrialist neighbours of Jati Umra but that they are being ‘summoned’ for some wrong reason or any ugly motive, has not yet been proved. However, given Mian Nawaz Sharif’s and Mian Shahbaz Sharif’s repeatedly declared commitment to honest means and humanitarianism, one hopes that the functionaries will not be allowed to misuse the name of the Punjab chieftain and his elder brother what to talk of expansion of palaces through official machinery’s clout or even otherwise.

mianrehman1@gmail.com

Published in The News, December 6^th, 2011

LAHORE POST – Struggle for a Judicious Society