- Kiss Your Sorry
Ass Goodbye! - Doomsday
- Constitutional Crisis
In A Nuclear State
Imagine, if you will, a bunch of professional men, smartly dressed in black suits and ties,
shouting anti-government slogans and hurling rocks at the police.
Michael David Crawford
ivymike@hydrogenbomb.org
Copyright © 2007 Michael David Crawford.
This work
is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has dismissed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, alleging that he misused his office.
While the government officially denies it, Chaudhry has been placed under house arrest, surrounded by a police barricade to prevent visitors:
"You cannot stop us from entering the residence of Iftikhar Chaudhry," (Qazi Hussain Ahmed, President of the Islamist opposition alliance Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal) told police, and then crossed the barricade.
The situation forced the police personnel to call reinforcement to foil the attempt of the opposition leaders.
Chaudry's "misuse of office" was to investigate the disappearances of four hundred people, many of them human rights workers, who were arrested since the War on Terrorism began, as well as to prevent the sale of a government-run steel mill and the conversion of a public park in Islamabad to a privately-run mini golf club.
Chaudry's dismissal has provoked a constitutional crisis in Pakistan. Of deep concern is that Pakistan possesses, and has successfully tested nuclear weapons. What will become of them if the government falls?
The government's reaction to a boycott of the courts by the country's lawyers has been to black out news media coverage of police brutality:
Geo TV and its arch rival Aaj TV were banned on Monday and the two channels went out off the air for several hours after they declined the instructions from the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority, (PEMRA) to stop coverage of the bloody lathi-charge on the agitating lawyers in which several of them including opposition Pakistan People Party (PPP) Senator and Advocate Lathif Khan Khosa sustained head injuries.
Photographs of bleeding Khosa flashing a victory sign with his blood soaked hands were splashed on front pages of the newspapers on Tuesday.
Chaudhry is to be tried by an in-camera (or secret) hearing before the Supreme Judicial Council, but protesting lawyers say the SJC is unconstitutional as one member, Iftikhar Hussain, has been removed.
When he tried to walk to his hearing, "He was pushed and thrown into a motor vehicle (by police)" according to his attorney, former interior minister Aitzaz Ahsan, who also said Chaudhry was "roughed up".
The Supreme Judicial Council has also ordered the media not to report or comment on the hearing.
Pakistan's nuclear weapons program was established in 1972 with its first successful tests conducted in 1998 in response to India's nuclear tests.
India and Pakistan have fought several wars and remain in deep dispute over the Kashmir region.
In an article published in The Washington Post, former Pakistani Premier Benazir Bhutto dismissed claims that only Musharraf stood in the way of nuclear-armed fundamentalists, "The notion of Musharraf's regime as the only non-Islamist option is disingenuous and the worst type of fear-mongering."
In a statement issued by the Pakistan Peoples Party, Bhutto further said:
the sudden suspension of the Chief Justice at a time when crucial constitutional issues are to come up for decision appears to be an attempt to influence the judiciary by pressuring it through the removal of the Chief Justice.
President Musharraf's government faces elections later this year. He has stated his intention to remain in power for five more years to "in order to roll back religious extremism, ensure political stability and sustained economic growth." His plan for re-election is to get the outgoing Parliament to re-appoint him to another five-year term before the elections!
Bhutto lives in exile and fears arrest if she should return to Pakistan; Musharraf will not allow her to run for election.
There are signs that the United States no longer supports Musharraf:
"I am not particularly worried about an extremist government coming to power and getting hold of nuclear weapons," Robert Richer, who was CIA associate director of operations in 2004 and 2005 told the New York Times.
"If something happened to Musharraf tomorrow, another general would step in."
In Fitting The Ominous Pieces Together, Shireen M. Mazari writes:
Many of us had been predicting the possibility of an US ingress into Pakistan with the latter's nuclear assets being the long-term target. Also, with US military journals suggesting the redrawing of the borders of the larger Muslim states, Pakistan needs to realise that its tremendous contribution to the war on terror notwithstanding, it would come under increasing US fire and pressure. That is what is now beginning to happen.
Mazari also writes:
we should pay serious attention to what is happening presently in our region, especially with the massing of US troops rather close to Pakistani waters. After all, the American aircraft-carrier, USS John C Stennis, is anchored about 120 nautical miles off the coast of Pakistan.
A thirteen year old Karachi girl threatened to set herself on fire if the Supreme Court didn't investigate the disappeared:
Gohram Baloch was picked up by law enforcement agencies at a checkpost in Gwadar in the southwestern province of Baluchistan last August and has not been heard from since, his family says.
"We are close to starving because our father is the only breadwinner. If he does not come back we have no option but to take extreme measures," said (his daughter) Shireen.
"Our only hope of ever seeing our father alive is through the Supreme Court. We beg the president to restore Justice Chaudhary and allow him to give us justice," Shireen said.