These constitutional amendments have nothing to do with the life of the common man who has been struggling from dawn to dusk to make both ends meet in this backbreaking inflation.
The 27th Amendment Bill sailed smoothly through the Senate, where two Senators ditched their parties to vote along with the treasury. Now the final draft of the Amendment Bill will be bulldozed through the timid Parliament by the timid rulers and assented to as the law of the land by an equally timid President. Definitely, the document we are worried about has long ceased to be called the 1973 Constitution restored through the 18th Amendment in April 2010, after two years of diligent work by Raza Rabbani. He genuinely felt proud of his meritorious services to the nation in reviving the 1973 Constitution, removing all the person-specific distortions inserted into it through the infamous 8th Amendment.
Though this amendment did not save General Zia ul Haq from natural justice, it empowered the establishment to send home five elected governments, including those of Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo, Benazir Bhutto (two terms), and Mian Nawaz Sharif (two terms). Mian Nawaz Sharif, in his second tenure, removed the above amendment, but General Musharraf got it passed from the rigged Parliament of 2002 with the help of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal of Maulana Fazal ur Rehman by offering them the provincial government of KPK and the opposition leadership in the National Assembly as a quid pro quo.
Prime Minister Muhammad Khan Junejo had also made a deal with General Zia to pass the 8th Amendment on the condition that martial law would be lifted and political activities restored immediately after the passage of the amendment. He did not know that his government would be the first to fall prey to these extraordinary powers. Later, the civilian Presidents ruthlessly exercised these powers to dismiss elected Prime Ministers and dissolve Legislative Assemblies on flimsy grounds. Mian Nawaz Sharif has a history of bad relations with his Generals. Benazir Bhutto bent over backwards to please General Aslam Beg by decorating him with the Tamgha-e-Jamhooriat and calling him her General Fidel Ramos (who helped Mrs Aquino acquire power). Her second government was dismissed by her handpicked President.
We never learn from our mistakes. If it was a mistake to appoint the serving Commander-in-Chief (General Ayub Khan) as the Defence Minister in the mid-1950s to show him the path to power; if it was a constitutional deviation to hand over power to General Yahya Khan, notwithstanding his personal and professional lapses, in violation of the 1962 Constitution; if it was a mistake to amend the Constitution at the behest of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to control the judiciary; if it was a mistake to adopt a person-specific amendment (8th Amendment) in the Constitution in 1985 how is the 26th Amendment, affecting the entire structure and juridical authority of the superior courts, legitimate, and how would the person-specific clauses of the 27th Amendment strengthen democratic, representative, and parliamentary governance in the country, and address the grievances of the common populace?
Seventy per cent of the population is no longer concerned with constitutional amendments. We have reduced this huge population, including our youth aged between 15 and 35 years, to a life of helplessness, despair, and apathy
These constitutional amendments have nothing to do with the life of the common man, who has been struggling from dawn to dusk to make both ends meet in this backbreaking inflation. He has pulled his children out of a comparatively good but slightly expensive school; he is unable to pay his modest utility and medicine bills; he visits charity hospitals because the public hospitals have become symbols of corruption, incompetence, arrogance, insensitivity, and carelessness. The population in front of public hospitals has been increasing owing to the unhygienic conditions in the urban centres where the municipal services have long since collapsed.
Seventy per cent of the population is no longer concerned with constitutional amendments. We have reduced this huge population, including our youth aged between 15 and 35 years, to a life of helplessness, despair, and apathy. Would they be concerned about the tenure of a senior state servant, or whether or not he wears his uniform throughout his life, dies with it, and is buried with it? Would they be bothered about the superior judiciary being reduced to kangaroo courts, or the transfer of judges from one High Court to another?
They would be least worried because they have long since lost confidence in the judiciary and hope for justice in this convoluted and expensive judicial system. They have been putting up with dire economic inequity and social injustice. They undergo the torturous process of the Thana culture, where people in custody are injured or killed with impunity through the unlawful process of “half fry” — shot in the leg, disabling them for life and “full fry” shot to death. Pathetic, isn’t it?
When the days of an authoritarian are numbered, his laws become increasingly despotic. Roman rulers were warned by Marcus Cicero, the famous statesman, lawyer, and writer. We have noticed this ominous trend in our legislative process over the past year with the rise of coercive laws. The 26th Amendment has already established the Executive’s full control over the judiciary to appoint favoured judges on the Constitutional Benches through the Judicial Commission of Pakistan, where it holds a majority. That is why the government has not so far lost a single constitutional case.
Why should I need to remain in uniform for my entire life? I have my titles. Nobody will snatch them from me unless impeached as per the procedure laid down in the Constitution. Again, why should I need immunity from arrest, prosecution, and punishment when I am holding no elected office? Where does this acute sense of insecurity stem from? I should ponder.
So now President Zardari would also be wearing a saint’s robes. There is no concept of immunity in Islamic or natural justice.