Courting Trouble

IF an earthquake had hit Islamabad last week, no one would have felt the tremors. The Pakistani capital was still coming to terms with the Nawaz Sharif government being jolted left, right and centre by the Supreme Court. If Sharif thought that by elevating five judges to the apex court he had ended his tussle with the chief justice of Pakistan, he was soon to witness for himself the consequences of awakening a sleeping giant. And the wounds, inflicted upon his Pakistan Muslim League after the legal battle had started to haemorrhage.

"Now I will speak through my judgements as judges speak through their judgements only. We are going in the right direction," chief justice Syed Sajjad Ali Shah told the media minutes after he had, in an unprecedented move, issued a show-cause notice to Sharif, his law minister, several parliamentarians, the PTV chairman and three editors for contempt of court. They have been asked to appear before the court on November 17.

"If found guilty, Sharif could be disqualified under Article 63 of the Constitution. Normally a show-cause notice is issued to a person if he is being treated as an accused. Technically the respondents in this case are contemners and they have to appear in court to explain their actions," Iftiqhar Gillani, who is assisting the court as amicus curiae, told 바카라.

So the heat is on. And Sharif's two-thirds majority does not seem to be helping. The contempt petition was filed by Mohammad Ikram Chowdhury, additional secretary, Supreme Court Bar Association; another petition was filed by Iqbal Haider, president of the Karachi-based Muslim Welfare Movement, and another by Manzoor Qadir also sought disqualification of the prime minister on the same ground.Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto is the only other prime minister of Pakistan who had to face contempt of court charges. As the government ducked for cover, petitioner Ikram Chowdhury insisted: "No ghosts but personal appearance is necessary."

바카라 웹사이트A day before, the PPP-led opposition had barely recovered from the Accountability Cell's reference to the chief accountability commissioner and the chief election commissioner about former prime minister바카라 웹사이트 Benazir Bhutto concealing her income and assets. If these charges are proved, she could face disqualification from Parliament. But with the contempt notice issued to Sharif, the PPP tried to refocus attention on the ruling party and its senator Aitzaz Ahsan quipped: "There are three Ms of the Muslim League government which they are pursuing—mandate,murder and motorway (a pet Sharif project). The Sharif government is rolling on the motorway to murder." He was referring to the killing of four Americans in Karachi.

The government is clearly paralysed. It is weighed under by the various cases that have piled up in the Supreme Court while Sharif was blindly fighting the judiciary on the issue of the appointment of the five judges. First, the supreme court summoned the record of a pending case before the Lahore high court regarding the distribution of commercial plots by Sharif when he was chief minister of Punjab, using his discretionary quota. Next was the Supreme Court's suo moto action in a case related to the rescheduling of huge loans to Sharif's family and its huge industrial empire. Sharif had allegedly abused his official powers to influence banks to arrive at an out-of-court settlement.

The third is a petition filed by Asif Ali Zardari challenging the Anti-Terrorist Act in the Supreme Court. In the fourth case the court took suo moto action when Gen. Nasirrulah Babar and Aftab Shaban Mirani, interior and defence ministers in Bhutto's government, respectively, invited the attention of the chief justice to a wheat freight contract awarded by the present government to a US company which had no fixed address. As if this was not enough, the Supreme Court has been furnished with a list of politicians who had been paid Rs 140 million by the former ISI chief, Asad Durrani, during the 1990 election. Sharif's name heads the list. The ISI had then brought together various political parties and formed a coalition called the Islamic Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) to fight Benazir Bhutto and the money was to be used to fight against her. Sharif headed the IJI, which had defeated the Bhutto-led PPP, bringing Sharif to power as prime minister for the first time.

So where does this leave the prime minister? "You can remove an elected prime minister through political means only," says Nusrat Javeed, a popular columnist. "One can replace him through a vote of no-confidence in the National Assembly or by creating a situation both within and outside Parliament which forces him to resign. Third, if someone decides to 'take over'. At the moment, I do not see any of the three possibilities maturing." But for a beleaguered Sharif, that would probably be little consolation.