Instead of basking in the glow of the deal on the 18th Amendment, a historic, momentous political success, Zardari has been forced to deal with the ghosts of his corrupt past this week. Is the Supreme Court out to get Zardari? I don’t know. What I do know is that while there were 8,041 beneficiaries of the NRO, there was only one Mr NRO: Asif Zardari. And the Supreme Court appears determined to not let us forget that.
CJ Iftikhar and Justice Ramday stunned long-time observers of the court by breathing fire on second-tier bureaucrats and government officials on Tuesday. When I made my way to the court on Wednesday, all anyone wanted to talk about was the dramatic scenes in the court a day earlier. A veteran lawyer who ardently campaigned for CJ Iftikhar’s reinstatement and, shall we say, isn’t a fan of Zardari was apoplectic.
Courtrooms, you see, are meant to be a picture of serenity and calm. But for a brief while on Tuesday, the soaring ceiling of Courtroom No 1 may well have been a big top as judges threatened with imprisonment the sacrificial lambs that appeared before them. The reason was ostensibly the across-the-board non-implementation of the NRO judgment, but the judges did betray a peculiar interest in the progress on the Swiss cases and NRO beneficiaries in the Zardari circle.
Like most people, I would be happy to see the rascals and the scoundrels who dot our political landscape and public officialdom get it in the neck. But there’s a time and place for everything and a way of doing things. And what transpired on Tuesday was definitely not the ideal way of getting the NRO judgment implemented.
Or was it? Enter the wretchedness of Pakistani politics.
Ever since the Dec 16 short order, the government has claimed that Zardari has constitutional immunity and nothing can be done about the Swiss cases as long as he’s president. To most constitutional lawyers this was a reasonable, even accurate, reading of the law.
But then the judges breathed fire and suddenly the letters to Switzerland were drafted. So are we now to assume that Zardari doesn’t in fact enjoy immunity? And if he does, then what’s changed? Nothing, other than the fact that the judges had to metaphorically pound their gavels to get the government to act.
Wouldn’t you be tempted to take this route, then, if you were on the Supreme Court? It’s easy to blame the judges for overstepping the boundaries of propriety and courtroom conventions, but had the government just done earlier what it’s in the process of doing now there would have been no need for courtroom unseemliness.
What’s next for Zardari? To understand that, we need to start with what the Supreme Court ordered in the NRO judgment. Narrowly constructed, the only thing the court ordered on the Swiss matters was for all the things Malik Qayyum did in his capacity as Musharraf’s attorney general to be withdrawn.
The exact language of paragraph 177 of the judgment reads: “… the communications addressed by Malik Muhammad Qayyum to various foreign fora/ authorities/courts withdrawing the requests earlier made by the Government of Pakistan.
Translated into layman’s terms, the Supreme Court was essentially telling the government that the Swiss judicial system will determine the fate of Zardari. Can they proceed with the cases while he’s the president of Pakistan? The Geneva public prosecutor’s comments to Reuters suggest not, but legal issues aren’t settled in casual remarks to a news service.
The main worry for Zardari, though, is what it has always been: the political cost. Securing a conviction against him for corruption has proved fiendishly difficult, even when a Pakistani government has been desperate to do so, as it was during Sharif’s second term. But the corruption allegations have proved a formidable weapon to destroy his political reputation.
On Wednesday, you could see again how it works. There on Dawn’s front page was the news of the deal on the 18th Amendment, and right beside it were the words ‘Swiss’, ‘cases’ and ‘Zardari’. His political foes will be happy: if they can’t get rid of him, at least they can be sure he will never grow in stature.
It’s not hard to imagine what the months ahead will look like either. Every few weeks there will be some news, either from Switzerland or Pakistan, of some development, or even non-developments, in the Zardari corruption saga.
And even if the Swiss quickly decide they can’t proceed against him but they guarantee that ‘Swiss’, ‘millions’ and ‘Zardari’ will definitely appear in headlines together in the months, and most likely years, ahead.
The accidental president will give up his powers before long, but what he won’t do is shake off his past any time soon.
