BY: Dr. Farooq Hassan

Last Monday I had the privilege of addressing Harvard Law School’s International Law intelligentsia with scholars composed of countries from Brazil to Kenya and Australia to India to analyse the current ‘constitutional’ situation in Pakistan. My view is that the ethos of the current state of political crisis in Pakistan emanates from the tragic reality that there is neither rule of law nor any respect for the constitution or indeed any Constitution at all.

What does the Constitution say on what is going on? Nobody really knows. It is ultimately what suits General Musharraf. Since 1999 with two major constitutional amendments packages, in addition to an LFO and now the PCO, the 1973 document that carried that label has really ceased to exist. The November 3 coup against the judiciary by a serving general established that affirmatively. Might is right seems to be the rule. In legal parlance this is the equivalent of a law of jungle.

The general (retd) has brought about 76 changes in the Constitution; all with just one objective, one raison d’etre, the grant of utter power to himself and subjugation of the judiciary and the prime minister including the parliament. On June 25, 2004 he created a world record of sorts by nominating three prime ministers of Pakistan in a matter of hours when under the Constitution this had to be done by the political party in power or the parliament.

Musharraf’s latest illustration of a rapidly lost credibility is provided by events of the last two days of January 2008. Musharraf was making his personal yearly pitch in Davos at that time before the richest people of this earth. Neither an economist nor a statesman God alone knows what he was doing there. In case some state business warranted that to occur, it was clearly the job of the prime minister to go. But who ask the general such questions pertaining to propriety of the parliamentary system?

——- snip

Read the whole column.

Trackback this Post | Feed on comments to this Post