Comment
By Tariq Butt
ISLAMABAD: The year 2019 was rocked by perpetual political turmoil, chaos and battles with topmost popular opposition politicians being imprisoned and convicted because of the intense accountability drive that targeted the anti-government figures.
If one organisation that could be named for being instrumental in catching hold of the opposition politicians throughout the year to make the going for the government smooth and hassle-free, it was the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). Since its inception, it never acted like this, not even during the martial law, and never became so deeply controversial and divisive.
As the year was to close, the Imran Khan government deemed it fit to largely defang the NAB saying this has been demanded by businessmen and others. Substantial curtailment of the powers of the anti-graft watchdog is believed to bring relief to the politicians. Its results, if any, will emerge during the new year when the law will be implemented.
The bygone year kept resounding with the sentencing and arrest of ex-prime minister Nawaz, his daughter Maryam, Shahbaz Sharif, Hamza Shahbaz, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Rana Sanaullah, Khawaja Saad Rafique, Khawaja Salman Rafique, Asif Ali Zardari, Faryal Talpur, Syed Khursheed Shah, Agha Siraj Durrani and several other opposition leaders.
A high point of the year was that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) solidly maintained its unity and stood behind Nawaz Sharif, who remained its sole decision maker while being even behind the bars. Despite his multiple grave diseases, he presented matchless steadfastness, strength and stamina and did not surrender. He kept facing the prison hardships bravely. The PML-N parliamentary parties in the national and Punjab legislatures never dithered and wavered contrary to their history and responded to the calls of their leadership. In spite of the unprecedentedly tough situation confronting its top leaders, the PML-N did not lose at the popular level, and rather gained and continued to be the principal political force of Pakistan. Maryam emerged as the most relevant and defiant leader of the PML-N.
An ironical aspect of the sorry political saga, gripping the whole year without interruptions, was that the government made not even a slight effort for reconciliation and lowering the temperature. Conversely, it kept igniting rows and provoking its opponents to do what they like and choose. The opposition’s offers like signing of charter of economy were contemptuously spurned with slurs of attempting to seek an NRO (amnesty, clemency and concessions from criminal cases of serious nature).
While the government and NAB opposed tooth and nail provision of any succor to imprisoned opposition stalwarts and strongly fought in judicial forums and elsewhere, superior courts came to their rescue in some cases by bailing them out, nailing the cases instituted against them by the NAB and other state agencies. Interim release of some of them by courts turned out to be a great embarrassment for the prosecution as well as the government.
Throughout the year, some government ministers kept predicting the arrest of one opposition leader or the other by the NAB with this happening precisely after sometime. This left no doubt anywhere about an exceptional coordination between the two. But simultaneously, the government never tired in repeating that it has nothing to do with the accountability campaign. Nobody believed it.
Linked to the accountability was the release of video/audio tapes of accountability judge Arshad Malik, who had convicted Nawaz Sharif in one reference and acquitted in another. This was one of the most eventful episodes of the year. It still keeps echoing on the political horizon. The disclosures (or confessions) made by the judge in his affidavit filed with the Islamabad High Court confirmed the claims made by Maryam about the recordings.
Also related to the accountability drive was the memorable character in the bureaucracy - Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) director general Bashir Memon – who stoutly refused to proceed against many opposition politicians even when he was strictly ordered by the most influential man to implicate them in criminal cases. As the Panama Joint Investigation Team (JIT) fame, Wajid Zia, controlled and supervised by accountability czar Barrister Shahzad Akbar, replaced him, the new man started implementing what his predecessors had rejected. In the new year, the role of the FIA in regard to the anti-government elements would be noteworthy. To start with, it has already raided the PML-N office in Lahore and questioned some of its leaders in connection with Arshad Malik’s tapes.
For the whole year, Parliament never became a functional body and did not do lawmaking that is its prime job. The record shows that the government’s thirty-four bills and 113 laws proposed by the private members are pending disposal in the National Assembly. Fearing resistance from the opposition-controlled Senate, the government did not pick up the courage to table any legislation in the Upper House of Parliament. The National Assembly mainly prided itself on passing only federal and mini budgets.
Because of the endless government-opposition tussle, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has become dysfunctional in the absence of key appointments of the Chief Election Commissioner and two ECP members. Every side persists with obsessions with having its nominees inducted in the ECP so that they protect their interests in the constitutional forum. In its entire history, the ECP never became as redundant as it has now been rendered. It is still unclear how much time the ECP will take to tide over this suspension.
The opposition parties faced a huge humiliation when their bid to oust Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani collapsed due to defections in their ranks during the secret ballot on their no-confidence resolution. They failed to identify the deserters. Their objective was to force exit of a man to give message to some other quarters.
Further intensifying the political mayhem, Jamiat Ulemae Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) Maulana Fazlur Rehman organised a march from Karachi to Islamabad culminating in a sit-in in the federal capital. It made the government pass sleepless nights during the first few days of the protest. But later, the regime gained confidence with the end of the agitation drawing close. The JUI-F chief’s adventure was highly disciplined, controlled and nonviolent unlike the 2014 sit-in of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
Fazlur Rehman was able to prove that he was a force to be reckoned with and can’t be dismissed as a political nonentity, but he was unable to immediately gain much out of the protest. While winding up his show, he gave the impression that he was going from Islamabad with firm commitments from relevant quarters but their result is yet to come before the general public. The PML-N and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) stayed away from the protest, which impacted it negatively otherwise it could have become very menacing.
In a first in Pakistan’s history, a military dictator was awarded death sentence for playing havoc with the Constitution by imposing a state of emergency. His first unconstitutional act of promulgating martial law in 1999 had been validated by the Supreme Court, but he was punished by a special court for his subsequent suspension of the Constitution. The judgment written by Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth, except its para 66, was hailed by legal minds for being perfectly according to the law. Nawaz Sharif and former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry played the key role in bringing death penalty to Musharraf. dismal aspect of the outgoing year is that the two principal political players – Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari – developed very falling health. Their condition deteriorated during incarceration ordered by the NAB. At the same time, Musharraf’s condition is also very alarming.
