The Silence of the Left: New Age Islam's Selection, 04 May 2017
New
Age Islam Edit Bureau
04 May 2017
• The Silence of the Left
By Iftekhar A Khan
• The Woman Card
By Agnes Poirier
• Tweeting Defiance
By Zahid Hussain
• Not By Invective
By I.A. Rehman
• Spy Warnings
By Owen Bennett-Jones
• Europe’s Changing Political & Strategic Trend
By S Qamar A Rizvi
• Judicial Haiku
By F.S. Aijazuddin
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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The Silence of the Left
By Iftekhar A Khan
May 4, 2017
Before Donald Trump completed his 100 days in office, he ordered to fire salvos into the distant wars that the imperial power has launched thousands of miles away from home.
In his election speeches, he gave the impression that he opposed sending troops to fight foreign wars and he would, if elected, call the forces back home. It seems the lobbies that flourish in wars have had the better of him.
While former US presidents, goaded by the neoconservatives and other ultra-right interest groups, launched wars in the Middle East, why did the liberals – especially the lefties in Europe – remain tight-lipped over the death and destruction inflicted upon the populations of defenceless countries?
The perception of the left-leaning liberals is that they oppose the wars, unequivocally give a voice to their concerns and openly side with the oppressed and the wronged because religious beliefs do not encumber them. Thousands of people have been killed and left homeless in Syria while the ‘men of conscience’, the liberals and lefties have not protested against the gruesome atrocities of the imperial powers.
Donald Trump made his debut into the war on April 7 when the US launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles in Syria, ostensibly on the report that the Syrian president had subjected his own people to a chemical weapons attack. Professor Theodore Postol at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believes there is a strong likelihood that the intelligence report on which the US launched a missile attack in Syria was fictitious. According to the professor, reliable methodologies to assess the veracity of intelligence reports were not applied.
Several former US intelligence officials have asked the American people to demand the US government for incontrovertible evidence of the Syrian government’s involvement in the April 4 Sarin-like gas attack against its own people. These officials suspect that cruise missiles attack in Syria was based on a spurious intelligence report.
When the US could attack and destroy Iraq and kill more than million of its men, women and children, based on a fabricated dossier on the weapons of mass destruction, there remained no need to assess intelligence reports. Similarly, before attacking Libya and assassinating its leader – Muammar Gaddafi – the super power didn’t need to produce any intelligence report to justify the change of regime.
Destroying Libya and killing its ruler on ‘humanitarian grounds’ was enough to justify the action. Both the Muslim countries – once prosperous welfare states – are now in turmoil. Nicolas Sarkozy, who was the president of France at the time of change of regime in Libya, reminded the rulers of the Gulf States to take heed of Gaddafi’s lynching. The other option he hinted at was obvious.
Donald Trump further blew away the public illusions about his opposition to foreign wars when he ordered to drop the Mother Of All Bombs in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan. The MOAB is the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal that was dropped for the first time in any war. The bomb, which explodes in the air and detonates 11 tonnes of TNT sucks oxygen from the targeted area underneath it, has the potential to pulverise rocks and turns the living into black dust.
The world was informed that the MOAB destroyed the tunnels and underground bunkers of insurgents and killed 60 of them. But nobody was allowed to visit the site of devastation. Who knows how many innocent people were killed in the blast?
Now preparations are under way to take on North Korea. Members of the US were briefed by the top military brass about the threat that the tiny country poses to the super power located thousands of miles away. Warring is a profitable business for the US. It must have enemies, real or imaginary, at all times.
Source: thenews.com.pk/print/202348-The-silence-of-the-left
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The Woman Card
By Agnes Poirier
May 4, 2017
Since she took over from her father, Marine Le Pen managed to close the gender gap, as well as the age gap. During her first presidential bid in 2012, when she scored 17.9 percent of the vote (6.4 million votes), the number of male and female voters who chose her party was almost equal.
In many ways, she has modernised her party. After all, her personal story shows a modern woman. She is a twice-divorced single mother of three who is personally pro-abortion rights and pro-gay rights. She certainly doesn’t scare female voters, young or old, the way her father did. In the last six years, the National Front’s stances on many women’s issues, such as abortion, have been toned down. There is no talk about repealing the abortion legislation or banning the pill any longer.
Marine Le Pen is also rather shrewd whenever she talks about Islam. She does it often by mentioning the Islamic veil or the Burqa. She talks about the oppression of imposing the veil and Burqa on women. That way, she both invokes and exploits the French secular traditions and feminist fight against patriarchy. After the mass sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany, in December 2016, Marine Le Pen invoked, for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir and Elizabeth Badinter, to attack open-door migration policies. In an opinion piece published in the French daily L’Opinion, she wrote: “I am revolted today by the unacceptable silence and, therefore, tacit consent of the French Left in the face of these fundamental attacks on the rights of women. I am scared that the migrant crisis signals the beginning of the end of women’s rights”.
Although stopping short from presenting herself as a ‘feminist’, she has also tried to appeal to French women by looking and behaving in a more approachable way. She may have inherited the forceful voice and physique of her father, but she chose to change the party’s logo, a flame, for a blue rose. On the poster for the second round campaign, she very unusually wears a skirt, and smiles, posing in front of bookcases. The poster’s slogan, ‘Choose France’ shows that she is trying to appear as the Mother of the Nation. In fact, she is deliberately tapping into the national unconscious: the French Republic is represented by a female figure wearing the revolutionary red Phrygian cap known as Marianne, and best remembered in the Delacroix painting. Every town hall and state schools in France has a bust of Marianne and every stamp and French euro coin show her face or profile.
Recently, Marine Le Pen’s strategy has been to particularly target working-class women who may fear their poorly paid jobs are at risk from immigrants. French women being represented in the service proletariat may feel particularly inclined to vote for the anti-globalisation and protectionist Marine Le Pen. Of course, some feminists, such as followers of the Femen movement, who are based in Paris, try as often as they can to call her bluff. They regularly ambush Marine Le Pen during public events, conferences or public speeches with, for instance, the words ‘Marine: Fake Feminist’ or ‘Le Pen Top Fascist’ painted across their chests.
The Femen and other French feminists insist that Le Pen is using women’s issues for xenophobic purposes, as a way to push forward an anti-immigrant agenda. In her 2017 political manifesto, Marine Le Pen develops 144 proposals in a 24-page long document. The word ‘women’ only appears twice. For feminists, such fact is revealing enough.
Source: thenews.com.pk/print/202349-The-woman-card
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Tweeting Defiance
By Zahid Hussain
May 4th, 2017
WHAT had been simmering for a long while erupted into the open last week when the military, through the DG ISPR’s tweet, publicly rejected a ‘notification’ issued by the Prime Minister’s Office. The letter, which was in fact meant for various ministries to take action and dubbed by the media as a ‘notification’, brought the conflict brewing between the civil and military leadership over the ‘Dawn leaks’ to a head.
Such a blatant gesture of defiance towards the civilian authority has set a new and highly dangerous precedent. The latest confrontation with the generals could not have come at a worse time for a beleaguered prime minister fighting a desperate battle for political survival. The situation has become more serious with the major opposition political parties putting their weight behind the military.
While the controversy over the Dawn report may have triggered the latest crisis, there are a number of other factors that have contributed to the current civil-military stand-off. There is an almost complete breakdown of trust between the two branches of state. The latest round of confrontation has also removed any illusions about improving civil-military relations with the change of army guard. This goes to show once again that it is the institution and not just the individual that matters in this tricky relationship.
The latest confrontation with the generals could not have come at a worse time for the beleaguered PM.
It has been a long and eventful fortnight for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif where nothing seems to have gone right for him. First it was the damning Supreme Court ruling in the Panama case, then came the controversy over the mysterious visit of Indian business tycoon Sajjan Jindal, and finally the defiant ISPR tweet throwing down the gauntlet.
It was not just the issue of an Indian family friend calling on the prime minister, but the timing and circumstances of Jindal’s visit that provoked criticism. What added to the controversy was the security establishment’s lingering suspicion regarding Sharif’s ‘soft-pedalling’ on India. Jindal’s tweets censuring the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies came in handy for the opposition to question the patriotism of the prime minister. A section of the media also went full-throttle fuelling the fire.
In the midst of all this, the Prime Minister’s Office notified the termination of the services of the prime minister’s special assistant on foreign affairs Tariq Fatemi and a senior information ministry official as per the recommendation of the investigation commission probing the Dawn report. The order was instantly rejected by the military for being incomplete. However, no substantial reason was given for the rebuttal. What is worse is that it triggered a media war with the commentators and TV anchors fighting it out on behalf of either side. The free-for-all turned the fracas into something uglier.
Interestingly, the opposition political parties jumped into the fray aligning themselves with the army’s position for purely opportunistic political reasons — they wanted to further weaken the Sharif government without realising the long-term ramifications of this for the system. However, this kind of political expediency is not new to our political culture. The PML-N too has played the same game in the past.
Surely, the government must share the blame for these heightened tensions. The confusion within the administration was apparent from the statement of the interior minister questioning the authority of the Prime Minister’s Office to issue such an order. He contended that this was the responsibility of his ministry. This speaks volumes for Sharif’s style of governance.
But the main issue is not who was authorised to issue the ‘notification’; the entire approach to the case was problematic. The serious divide between the civilians and the military members of the commission was known. This was the main reason for the long delay in finalising the report, even though it still appears inconclusive. The military leadership seems to have had strong reservations over the findings of the commission and its recommendations.
For the past few months, backchannel efforts were on to resolve the differences. Some compromise was apparently reached whereby Fatemi was to be removed, even though there was no substantive evidence of his being directly or indirectly involved in the so-called leak. But the military seemed to be unhappy with the wording of the ‘notification’ that implied it was just a change of portfolio. Was that such a big deal for the army that it had to issue a public rejection? It surely would have been better had the entire report been made public.
There is certainly some credence to the argument that the entire issue of the ‘leak’ was blown out of proportion. It could have easily been dealt with through some administrative action rather than forming a joint investigation committee. It was apparent from the outset that such a motley team of investigators would not be able to reach a conclusion to the satisfaction of all sides.
For sure, this build-up of the narrative about national security having been breached incensed the army rank and file, bringing the leadership under huge pressure. Not surprisingly, the issue was raised during the visit of the new army chief to various garrisons.
It had become an emotional issue and thus needed more prudent handling. Moreover, it had become the main obstacle in the way of making any effort to improve civil-military relations. The role of the opposition in whipping up differences has also contributed to the heightened tensions. The present political crisis has given space to the military to assert itself more strongly.
This deepening civil-military conflict is dangerous not only for the country that is facing grave external and internal security challenges, but also for the democratic political process. The confrontation will not only harm the present political set-up; it will also have a negative impact on the institution of the armed forces. The responsibility lies with both the civilian and military leaderships to resolve this stand-off before it is too late. This open defiance of constitutional authority must stop.
Source: dawn.com/news/1330703/tweeting-defiance
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Not By Invective
By I.A. Rehman
May 4th, 2017
FOR several weeks now, people have been treated to political debates of a variety that is recognised neither by authorities on political science nor by democratic convention, and which can only be described as shallow politicking.
First there was a furore over the allegedly liberal grant of visas to United States citizens during the PPP government (2008-2013) without scrutinising the applicants’ bona fides. The matter was blown out of proportion to hit out at a party that is tolerated by none of its mainstream rivals. Angry statements were issued to newspapers, and TV anchors and panellists bent over backwards to whip the government concerned with a display of righteous fury worthy of a genuinely political issue.
Quite a few things were ignored in this debate — no questions were asked about the clearance of visa applications by the security officials at the Pakistan embassy in Washington, and it was assumed that the grant of visas was the only instance of the state’s stooping to secure US patronage. No one bothered to recall Gen Ayub Khan’s description of Pakistan as the “most allied” of US allies, nor was any reference made to Gen Ziaul Haq’s offer of favours and gifts to Charlie Wilson, including a field marshal’s uniform.
Then much hullabaloo was created over Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s meeting with an Indian industrialist, Sajjan Jindal, said to be a confidant of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The report that described Jindal’s visit as secret also mentioned that he had been officially received at Lahore and Murree.
The only odd part of the story was the allegation that Jindal had travelled to Murree without a visa and that the Punjab home secretary should have put Murree on the visitor’s passport before he flew to the hill station. Some criticism on this point might have been valid and the prime minister could also be blamed for ignoring the environment around him. But politicians and commentators went for him with daggers drawn as if an act of treason had been committed.
Everybody is demanding punishment for those who have not yet been found guilty.
Again the critics, both among the politicians and the commentators at large, ignored the importance and usefulness of informal diplomacy that is recognised by all governments who wish to break a stalemate in their official attempts to set their external relations right. They spoke of the current state of tension in Pakistan-India relations as a permanent article of faith. They also appeared to reject the idea that the businessmen of the two countries could play a role in ending the confrontation between the two neighbours.
Eventually, Mr Khurshid Kasuri, foreign minister in the Pervez Musharraf regime and now a leading PTI figure, had to remind everyone that backchannel diplomacy was in order.
Now a large number of people have gone berserk over the so-called notification issued by the prime minister’s secretariat on the report of the committee that inquired into what is described as a news leak. They are not content with a discussion on the procedure applicable to the release of such reports or the propriety of the ISPR chief’s decision to reject the ‘notification’; they are only angry as to why more heads have not rolled. The opposition parties seem determined to use the matter as a weapon to hound the government. Everybody is demanding punishment for those who have not yet been found guilty, indeed before any offence has been established in any court of law.
A little bit of serious reflection by the honourable parties to this debate should help them realise that the matter touches upon the right to freedom of expression guaranteed not only to the media but also to all the people and their right to know, and that these rights cannot be summarily dismissed.
In all these three instances of noisy and considerably wild verbal warfare, the politicians and freelance commentators have obviously been trying to curry favour with the military. One hopes the military leadership is mature enough to avoid getting involved in partisan politics.
Finally, it seems that the opposition parties are convinced the prime minister could somehow be put out of the reckoning and that any lack of agreement among the PML-N leadership on his replacement, not only on a permanent basis but also for the short term, will leave the party with no option but to call for an early election. However, the PML-N appears to be confident of its ability to weather the storm for two reasons. Firstly, it seems quite convinced that the opposition parties cannot unite against it. Secondly, it thinks the next election will not be fought on the issue of the Panama case alone.
That all the political parties have already launched their election campaigns cannot be denied. The opposition parties are concentrating on the Panama case as the principal weapon against the PML-N and this could help the latter more than yielding any benefit to themselves.
To some extent corruption will be an issue in the elections but it will be wrong for any party to wholly depend on it. All parties will be tested not only for integrity but also for competence to rule efficiently. People prefer efficient performers, even if their integrity is questionable, to leaders believed to be honest but who may be inefficient or lack the will or capacity to do the right thing at the right time.
That means the parties out in the field will have to give up their present style of mudslinging. Instead of demonising one another, they must come out with their plans to guarantee good governance and a people-friendly dispensation if they are voted into power. After all, democratic politics cannot be promoted by invective.
Source: dawn.com/news/1330837/not-by-invective
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Spy Warnings
By Owen Bennett-Jones
May 4th, 2017
SPIES are not encouraged to write their memoirs. But after a career keeping secrets, many feel the urge to spend their twilight years recounting their heroics. Such accounts should be read with caution. Spooks are no exception to the general rule that autobiographers tend to dwell on the successes and skip over the failures. And when it comes to reading tales of espionage there is an extra reason to be wary. Former intelligence officials are not beyond slipping in the odd misleading fact.
Nevertheless, information in the public domain from spooks and people who work with them should not be dismissed out of hand. And with that in mind here is a brief survey of some recent publications by Indian deep state apparatchiks with special attention paid to their remarks on Pakistan.
Many passages in the books written by former Indian intelligence officials speak of too many competing agencies with overlapping areas of responsibility being consumed by turf wars rather than cooperating to identify threats. Much the same could be written about most national intelligence systems. But there are also specific claims about Pakistan and in particular Kargil and the 2008 attack on Mumbai.
Spooks’ information shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.
In Re-Energising Indian Intelligence, Manoj Shrivastava who worked in the Military Intelligence Directorate, suggests that RAW did have advance knowledge of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) attack on Mumbai but the information failed to make its way up to the relevant decisions-makers. In India’s Special Forces, Lt-Gen P.C. Katoch, who for many years worked in India’s Special Forces, confirms the view that India missed opportunities to be better prepared for Mumbai. Specific information in the hands of various parts of the Indian authorities, he says, included reports of an LeT ship leaving Karachi. Both authors say the CIA station chief in Delhi warned RAW that there would be an imminent seaborne attack on Mumbai. Katosh adds that the CIA information originated with intercepts made by its station in Jalalabad in Afghanistan.
In his account of Mumbai, journalist Sandeep Unnithan claims that RAW and India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) had been warning the Mumbai police about the possibility of an LeT seaborne attack since 2006. In all, there were 26 such warnings, six of which mentioned a seaborne attack. Some of the warnings gave specific dates in 2008, and others listed hotels and government buildings as possible targets.
The information was not entirely ignored — for example, the owners of the Leopold Cafe and the management of the Taj hotel (both of which were attacked) were advised to increase their security, but beyond that few preventative preparations were made.
Intriguingly, Unnithan also writes that on Oct 20, 2008, the combined operations room (bringing together the navy, coast guard, IB, army and border security) in the coastal town of Vadinar in Gujarat flashed an alert to Delhi saying 30 terrorists were crossing for an attack within the next 30 days. Once again the warning got lost in the system.
There are similar remarks about Kargil. Shrivastava claims that in the run up to Kargil, RAW and IB both picked up on increased Pakistani activity at the Line of Control. But the full scale of what India faced only became apparent when, according to journalist Praveen Swami, three shepherds in the spring of 1999 told the Indian authorities they had seen a group of Pathans digging trenches near the LoC. When troops went to the area they were ambushed and subsequent probes into the area met the same fate. It was only then that India realised there had been a significant infiltration.
More generally, Katoch claims that, when operating in Kashmir, the Indian military did not rely just on captured militants to obtain information but also had men pose as militants so as to gather intelligence. “Over a period of time most Special Forces operatives could very well merge with terrorists, speaking their language, dressing and living like them. It became a fun game for youngsters like Capt K.P. Singh to meet infiltrating Pakistani terrorists and scalp them.” He also describes a story in which he claims that the son of LeT’s Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi was killed near Srinagar after a Special Forces unit identified a safe house by using handheld thermal imagers hooked up to some TV sets.
In his memoir, Courage and Conviction, former Indian army chief Gen V.K. Singh claims that when he was posted to the town of Samba in 1998 near the LoC he put together “a grid of ex-servicemen and informants who were to be our eyes and ears on the ground. I also knew quite a few Gujjars and Bakarwals who transited through these areas to Naushera in the summer to graze their animals. They too were a valuable source of information.”
Good intelligence gathering and poor assessment capabilities are a common theme of many of these accounts by ex-Indian intelligence officials. The overall impression is that it is rather easier to gather information than it is to work out what to do with it.
Source; dawn.com/news/1330841/spy-warnings
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Europe’s Changing Political & Strategic Trend
By S Qamar A Rizvi
May 4th, 2017
EVEN after going through too many political vicissitudes via far right populism-cum-left wing polpulism (post-partisan pragmatism), the Europeans yet seem divided or gravitated towards the right and left wing orientations seemingly ingrained by Euro scepticism. This observation has been vindicated by the recently held elections in Netherlands, casting a blow to the far right populist Freedom Party (PVV) of Geert Wilders. The European political picturesque reflects shift in its political and strategic trend. The year 2017 can be pivotal for Europe. France is holding national elections on May 7, and most importantly, Germany’s Angela Merkel might be facing a tough task in the coming polls, this summer.
The EU’s compromise machine seems establishing an institutionalised grand coalition between the centre-left and the centre-right that routinely ignores opposing voices. Certainly, some cross-national trends are changing political parties in all Western democracies. Many of these changes provide fruitions for those at the top of their parties, who have been gaining more popular legitimation and exercise more powers than they were in the past. Indeed, if party leadership selections used to be an oligarchic intra-elite selection procedure, now an increasing number of parties allow members to participate directly in the selection of the party leader. Moreover, the process of presidentialisation of democratic government brings about a shift of power and responsibilities from the collective to the monocratic feature. Because of short and long term factors, such as the mediatisation of political life, as well as to charismatic appeal of single presidents, party leaders seem to be assuming the role of the protagonist in the democratic world. Therefore, examining party leaders has become an endorsed fashion- not only a way of analysing one of the most relevant actors in representative regimes, but also an opportunity to observe the ways in which democracy itself is departing from its traditional form.
As richly reflected in the aftermath of the current financial crisis, voters now seem to be particularly attracted to the political rhetoric of the extreme right, which often attributes blame to minorities or foreigners. On average, extreme right-wing parties increase their vote share by 30% after a financial crisis. Importantly, we do not observe similar political dynamics in normal recessions or after severe macroeconomic shocks that are not financial in nature. The drive about civil activism— run by volunteers— is not confined to EU countries. In early 2016, Swiss students from Fribourg University set up a progressive liberal movement, Operation Libero, to fight populist demands for borders and tighter rules on immigration and Islam. The students have chalked up remarkable successes already, twice defeating the far Right in sensitive nationwide referenda. This model has inspired other Europeans to set up open and cosmopolitan campaigns, too. Some of them come to little or nothing, others flourish. Some focus on specific issues, others have broader political aims.
Apparently, all seek to give a voice to citizens who feel that the European project is under threat from calls for EU powers to be renationalised or for member states to exit the union. In the Netherlands, several citizen groups that support the EU have become active over recent months. In the UK, the organizers of last year’s Hug a Brit initiative, which encouraged Europeans to embrace Brits and urged them to vote to stay in the EU in the UK’s June 2016 referendum, plan to set up a new pan-European project to promote European togetherness.
Notably, some politicians have appraised that countering populism with a cosmopolitan approach creates an electoral potential. Alexander Van der Bellen, a retired economics professor who was elected Austrian president in December 2016, relied heavily on grassroots supporters. France’s Macron, who doesn’t belong to an established political party (although he has served as a minister in a Socialist government), also enjoys support across the board thereby seemingly taking supremacy over Len Pen on May 7. He is an ardent advocate of fostering change in the European project. Like Van der Bellen was, Macron is also a convinced European who faces a Euroskeptic populist as his main opponent. “For those who want Europe to be open and forward looking, Macron is the only choice,” said Jean-Louis Bourlanges, formerly a French centrist member of the European Parliament.
The politics of EU members do not move in lockstep as shown by the fact while Britain has sidled right as it contemplates exiting the EU, Greece has run in the other direction, with the far-left Syriza party taking control of the government. Generally, most parliaments tend to hover near the centre, with occasional surges to the left or right. Consequently the French, who have in the past few years been Germany’s partners in leading the E.U., even when it came to austerity, certainly have plenty of fodder for their diatribes. But as the beleaguered Germans are noticing as well, the French aren’t the only ones raising objections to the German-led Union. Since continent’s problems can only be addressed through increased cooperation; European electorates refuse to endorse any further transfer of sovereignty to Brussels.
The political typology of the European system represents a considerable simplification of a complex political reality. Without wondering, the continental systems at the bottom of the Nordic and Catholic lists—Germany, Austria, France, and the Netherlands—seem to have drawn a parallel line with each other than with the paradigmatic Nordic and Catholic systems, Sweden and Spain. Meanwhile, the post-communist label obscures some significant variation along the same lines evident in Western Europe, with the Czech Republic and Bulgaria sharing features of the Nordic system and Poland, Slovenia, and Slovakia tend tilted toward the Catholic pattern.
As for the changing strategic trend of the European countries, the winds are blowing in different directions, however, and each of the borderlands countries— which include the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and the countries of the Caucasus – is seen reacting to the shifting geopolitical circumstances differently. Some are trying to pursue closer ties to Russia, others are doubling down on their bets on Western integration; while some of them are attempting to walk a tightrope between Moscow and the West. Understandably, what each country is doing to adapt to the fast-evolving geopolitical conditions and determining where they are headed requires examining the context of geography and national strategy across the region.
Source; pakobserver.net/europes-changing-political-strategic-trend/
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Judicial Haiku
By F.S. Aijazuddin
May 4th, 2017
BREVITY, like wit, is the soul of haiku. Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry in which each poem is limited to three lines, with no more than 17 syllables in all. Haiku was not invented by lawyers.
The advice of the ancients — ‘Let all mortal flesh keep silence’ — is not to be found in the catechism of the legal profession. To judges and lawyers, the quest for truth and justice demands hours of debate, paragraphs of analysis and introspection, and a forest of trees pulped into reams of legal-length paper.
The public was not surprised therefore when the published text of the recent Supreme Court verdict on the Panamagate case was spread over 549 pages, containing 94 paragraphs and nearly 175,000 words. It dwarfs the terse 313 words of the Ten Commandments.
There is no previous judgement in Pakistan’s 70-year judicial history that had been pumped up into such a dirigible balloon of expectations. Three political parties led by the indefatigable Imran Khan believed that, based on the voluminous evidence they had presented to the five member bench of the Supreme Court, all that the apex body had to do was to blow the trumpet supplied by the plaintiffs, and the walls of Nawaz Sharif’s Jericho would fall down.
Truth demands a forest pulped into reams of legal-length paper.
The hopes of an anxious public were heightened by an observation made by Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan (a member of the Panamagate bench) in another case. “Our pronouncements,” he proclaimed, will remain “for centuries”. It is now for posterity to decide which will endure — this ponderous judicial verdict, or the quicksilver memory of the public.
Much has been made of its opening paragraph. It quotes not pertinent judicial precedents but a book about an Italian Mafia family — the Corleones — from Sicily. An equally pertinent obiter dicta might have come in as handy — the observation by another Mediterranean islander, the Corsican Napoleon Bonaparte. “Glory,” he said, “is fleeting, but obscurity is forever”.
Our political practices owe as much to the Italian Mafia as our judicial system does to the ancient Romans. Their concepts of jurisprudence permeate our legal traditions. Take the maxim articulated by the third-century jurist Julius Prudentissimus, the accepted author of the concept of the presumption of innocence: Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat — Proof lies on him who asserts, not on him who denies. It means that the onus lies on the accuser to prove an allegation, not on the defendant to justify his innocence.
There are still Pakistanis alive who can recall the nationalisation of Ittefaq Foundries by Mr Z.A. Bhutto in January 1972, the paucity of its book assets, the discovery of the Sharifs’ family jewellery in the company safe, and the selective denationalisation by Gen Ziaul Haq to the godfather Sharif. Since then, many millions of Pakistanis have watched with incredulity the wealth of the Sharif dynasty procreate and multiply until it makes Fort Knox look like petty cash.
Is crime (as the Supreme Court bench hinted) the magic crucible from which flows all inordinate wealth? That will be for the joint investigation team (including nominees of the ISI and MI) to unearth and for a new bench to decide.
Meanwhile, Nawaz Sharif has involved himself in (yet another) needless confrontation with the army’s leadership. The prime minister may handpick his COAS, as Nawaz Sharif did Gen Qamar Bajwa six months ago, but he cannot prevent a uniformed Thomas Becket expanding into an archbishop of Canterbury, choosing God over Caesar.
The first retort in the proxy war between them has been heard. Tweets have been hurled like North Korean misguided missiles by Maj-Gen Asif Ghafoor of the ISPR and Maryam Nawaz, the prime minister’s daughter over the ‘Dawn leak’ report. Consider. An elected prime minister is told by tweet that a notification issued under his authority has been ‘rejected’ by the Pakistan Army. His as yet unelected daughter responds in kind, tweetly.
Nawaz Sharif might regard this challenge as institutional insolence, at worst an act of constitutional insubordination. For him, it must seem a disheartening reprise of October 1999 when he ordered the removal of the then COAS Gen Musharraf, and then discovered his own name on the marching orders. History does not repeat itself; it is politicians who repeat their own mistakes.
Rational Pakistanis are gradually slipping into a coma watching the sleep-inducing shenanigans in Islamabad. They tremble at the prospect of the next gene ral election that will elect members to an assembly that cannot assemble enough numbers to form a quorum, has no time for the country’s business and no inclination to be held accountable.
The Pakistani public mourns the loss of authority that radiates from their ballot papers. It expects clarity and integrity in leadership. It had hoped for a judicial haiku.
Source: dawn.com/news/1330840/judicial-haiku
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URL: https://www.newageislam.com/pakistan-press/the-silence-left-new-age/d/111014