Poor Nihal Hashemi has at long last received his comeuppance. He had begun roaring to the rafters at the behest of the fatter lions who have gorged themselves to satisfaction, and are in an advanced state of preparation to flee the country if the situation so demands.
In the case of Hashemi perhaps it was right for the S.C to exercise restraint. Perhaps the Court did not want the Chief Crook of Pakistan to draw attention away from the main issue of his disqualification and trial for corruption.
But this restraint did a huge amount of damage to Pakistan. It totally undermined the morale of the people of Pakistan who, though they do not expect justice from the S.C because there was no precedence for this, nevertheless saw this Court as their refuge of last resort.
Can the Court even imagine the depth the of insecurity that its acquiescence in the face of lurid abuse by Maryam and her Gaali Galoch team must have caused Wajid Zia and his JIT team? Or the pressure Judge Mohammad Bashir of the NAB court must be ground under when the SC seemed to surrender so abjectly to the daily barrage of abuse which was hurled its way by Nawaz Sharif and his long line of poodles? Could the political bosses, cowards each and every one, have continued looting the country with nary a care even after 28 Jul 2017, had the Court come down hard on them?
In military terms what the Court did was to begin ceding ground to the enemy the moment it had breached the enemy defenses. This gave the impression to all and sundry that all this was nothing more than ‘topi drama”. It served to cow down the few honest bureaucrats and police officers who still wanted to be effective in the discharge of their duties, but gave great heart to those underlings of the political bosses who were still tearing at the entrails of the country.
Nihal Hashemi’s punishment has injected a flicker of life to the faint pulse of hope among all those who want this country to change course and thrive once more.
The Court surely knows that the Army Chief stands solidly behind it; and Gen Bajwa must have no doubt that the army stands just as solidly behind him. And behind them stands a large majority of the people of Pakistan.
Such alignment of stars occurs seldom in our history. It is now for Mr Justice Saqib Nisar, fully backed by Gen Bajwa, to make history. This is a huge task, but nothing that cannot be done.
Let the court begin by arraigning and then convicting all those poodles who have, daily tried to bring the Judiciary and the Army of their country into disrepute. And let Nawaz Sharif and his snarling daughter not be spared the music of the law. Let them both get the dose that will make them dance the suitable jig.
When a group of people make a plan, this is called strategizing. When such a plan is made to further an illegal purpose, it is called conspiracy. And this is what Nawaz, Maryam, and her GG brigade are guilty of… conspiracy to denigrate the army and the judiciary and to sow anarchy among the populace.
Pakistan has been looted mercilessly over the last ten years. There is hardly a minister who has not partaken of this loot. Its coffers are empty now. Its debt, both internal and external has broken all records, and there is no money to pay these back. Most of this money has gone to the pockets of those who took oath to serve Pakistan, and in the pockets of their facilitators among the bureaucrats, the police, and private footmen. And this stolen wealth has been carted and stashed abroad. What they have stolen nearly equals the national debt.
The civil service, most of the police services, and every national institution lies destroyed. The higher judiciary and the army are the only ones still left partially standing. And the open aim of Nawaz Sharif and the political parties aligned with him is to destroy these as well. But what has been destroyed worst of all are the last vestiges of the culture of honesty and the very minimal of decency. A national ethos stands destroyed.
No one knows where the Baldia case stands in which MQM burned more than 250 alive; nor the case of the Model Town massacre which we all saw on our TV screens. But where Pakistan was really dragged into the gutter was with the case of the 250 kids in Kasur who were abducted for the purpose of making child porno films. And this was covered up. None of these cases would have remained in limbo had the highest of our political bosses not wanted this to be their outcome. And any number of these political bosses have in-house gangs of gangsters, while their political parties patronize various militant groups against which the state is waging a war to the death! And in this war our army is paying every day with its blood.
Economically Pakistan has been brought to its knees without the enemy having had to fire a single shot. What a shame that the generals, the de facto guardians of national security slept at the wheel when the very foundations of the state were being undermined in broad daylight! Did none of them have the imagination to look beyond the pamphlets they read? Yet many of them had the wits about them to join in the loot. And the few who were caught, were then let off with a mere slap on their martial wrists. Yes, what a shame!
And yet there is hope in the judiciary and the army. This hope is best manifested in the cry for justice among all those who suffer calamity, and then appeal to the Chief Justice and the Army Chief for help.
It is quite obvious that if ever there was need for national emergency to be imposed, that time is now because the outlaws, often in the shape of our mercenary political elite, have overwhelmed the state. Yet the constitution does not allow anyone but the P.M to advise the President to impose such emergency. But alas we have a PM [Khaqan Abbasi], battened on theft, who insists that the biggest thief of Pakistan is the real PM of Pakistan and insists on taking orders from him!
This is one instance of where the Constitution of the land stands in clear opposition to the interests of the State. The State, reeling under merciless blows, begs that an emergency be imposed, so it can be retrieved from the claws of those that have rendered it pitifully moribund, but the man who can impose it won’t, because he needs to protect his loot, that of his colleagues, and of his boss. So the State must be sacrificed to save the loot and the hide of those sworn to serve and protect the State, but who chose instead to hollow it out!
So if anyone can now save the State, it is the S.C, backed up by the Army. It is for the SC to determine where the Constitution allows it elbow room to come to the assistance of the State. What the SC has done thus far is not nearly enough. It must go much further. What Mr Justice Saqib Nisar and Gen Bajwa will be judged by is whether they did enough to save the State or were they found wanting at the hour of its greatest peril. All half measures will go into the trash bin of ignominious history. In any State, the State itself is the highest value. As the Romans said, when the State is in peril, all laws stand suspended.
And should the CJ and the Gen incline to this Roman view, they must know the following.
- Corruption is the mother of all our ailments. It lies at the very core of all our misfortunes and it is here that all the others have their root.
- Pakistan will not survive unless the loot is stopped, and looted wealth is brought back and Pakistan can pay back its creditors. To save the State therefore, we should not be afraid to throw the book at a few thousand traitors who have sold the future of our children and our country. And these few thousand are cowards. All the C.J and the Army Chief have to do is to summon to their assistance more courage than those they now confront.
- What is called “democracy” in Pakistan is a measly euphemism for a system having its very foundations in corruption. It is a “return on investment” system in which I invest ten crores to win an election in order to make a hundred crores when I win it. And when I win it and become a minister, I need a secretary to help me make money, and thus the civil service is corrupted. And then I need the police to help give me protection from the law, and so the police is destroyed. Then laws need to be crafted to give me immunity, and so holes are drilled into the legal code. And last, the Constitution is mangled the way ours has been so no institution can reach us. This system cannot deliver democracy. This can only destroy the State by gouging it out. The very first step to correct this situation is to make the police and the bureaucracy totally independent of the legislatures as far as their seniority, promotions, and postings and transfers are concerned. No minister should be able to ask for a specific officer to be his secretary, nor a police officer to be is IG.
But these are merely hopes and suggestions. They will remain hopes and suggestions till the day the depredations and havoc wreaked on this land draw tears of rage among the judiciary and the generals. Till they begin to empathize with those who have been so heartlessly deprived of their futures, who sleep in the open, get one meal a day, and have large amounts of shit in the water they drink, nothing can be done.
p.s. I would here like to draw the attention of the C.J to the land mafia which operates with impunity in every city. No criminal group has brought overnight poverty to more Pakistanis than this group. No group has contributed to organized crime as much as the land mafia has. Every operative of these groups should be hunted down and brought to justice.