Daily Times

In moving from “four legs good, two legs bad” to “four legs good, two legs better”, it has taken the Apex court in excess of a few months. And all this while the onlookers, the poor people of this country, kept hoping for the Sugarcandy Mountain – that mythical country where they would be able to rest from their labours. Was this a dream, or a farce? What a waste!

I thought the judges had set out to separate human beings from pigs. They could not make out one from the other. They ended up asking for further investigation saying that the dividing line was still rather blurred. What are the prospects that the line will become any clearer at the next sitting of the apex court when it is adorned with different faces? And, if there are no clear prospects, why wait for another time particularly when some of the bench mates were already able to see the division clearly?

Justice Khosa was able to figure the dividing line and went the whole hog directing the Election Commission to issue notification for disqualifying Nawaz Sharif from being a member of the National Assembly and, consequently, the Prime Minister of the country. The neutrality and impartiality of the incumbent Chairman, National Accountability Bureau (NAB), was found to be compromised in matters concerning Nawaz Sharif. Justice Khosa also issued directives to NAB to initiate investigation into allegations of corruption and corrupt practices against Nawaz Sharif and any other person connected with him.

Justice Gulzar Ahmed also rendered the incumbent Prime Minister disqualified from being a member of the National Assembly and holding the office any further.

The other judges, three in number, trying as hard as they did, could only see the vague contours of the dividing line. They needed to see more clearly, thus requiring more time. And the mechanism they thought would guide them there was the constitution of a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to probe the allegations and report back to the Supreme Court (SC) within sixty days, with periodic progress reports every two weeks. With all members of the proposed JIT reporting to the Prime Minister, directly or through their immediate bosses, it’s a pipe dream suggesting that justice could be beckoning round the corner!

The judges also requested the Chief Justice to constitute a special bench to ensure the implementation of the judgment.

The court order that begins with a virtual indictment of the sitting Prime Minister (“Behind every great fortune, there is a crime”, Mario Puzo, ‘The Godfather’) ends with an inaudible whimper. Well, just about!

The high point of the judgment is that no judge of the bench exonerated Nawaz Sharif which is a moment of great shame for the Sharifs, the country and the nation. The low point is that the judges have allowed an alleged criminal to continue as the Prime Minister of the country.

And this is where the court has erred more than in its findings. If it were interested in ensuring a genuine probe by the JIT, it needed to ask the Prime Minister to step aside till the completion of the investigation and the final verdict of the SC.

Let’s look at it from another perspective. Faced with the damaging findings of the SC, how would an honourable person respond? He’ll respond appropriately – by resigning pending the completion of the ordered enquiry into allegations of corruption and misconduct against him. Instead, there was a noisy bleating of hurrahs as the ruling party went into giving an inverted spin to the judgment.

This is not the first time we are witnessing a possible miscarriage of justice. We have seen such enactments before. We have seen the coinage of the doctrine of necessity that legitimised the military take-overs through decades. We have seen the mentors of the bench allowing a dictator carte blanche powers to amend the constitution as he may please. We have seen the Apex court sitting on cases for decades, the one moved by Asghar Khan being a prime example. We have seen the judges speaking preponderantly through words rather than their judgments.

But this was no ordinary case. The judgment here had the potential to propel the country into a different realm – a realm of great promise and hope that the institutions were actually delivering.

That hope may not have been completely dashed, but it has been shelved – at least for another 60 to 75 days. And there is no definitive prospect that the mechanism that the Apex court has devised to get to the answers of its queries is actually the right one, or that the JIT so formed will be allowed to function in an independent and transparent manner in finding unambiguous answers to these questions.

Whenever the pigs, the leaders in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, smelled that there could be a possible rebellion, they would come up with the classic query: “Surely, none of you wishes to see Jones back?”– Jones being the owner of the Manor Farm before the pigs schemed the take-over. Do I smell a Jones in this judgment?

And, has the decision allowed a potentially criminal Prime Minister a short or a long lease of life in office? After all, if the pigs could learn to walk on their hind legs to act human, an alleged criminal, with all powers of the office vested in him, and suffering from no shame in using these in any manner that may suit his cause, could employ his battalions of bootleggers to favourably influence the JIT entrusted with the task of conducting the probe into allegations that may potentially end in his dismissal from office.

We are definitely in for some more pig-rule. One cannot say at this juncture whether it will be a short one, a protracted one, or a perennial one. And, how awfully piggish it will be?

But, relax. Enjoy the hind-leg march as it continues!

The writer is a political and security strategist, and heads the Regional Peace Institute – an Islamabad-based think tank. Email: raoofhasan@hotmail.com. Twitter: @RaoofHasan