Daily Times editorial Dec 23, 2009

Breathing space

In a rare display of statesmanship in a climate of rising tension in the post-National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) scenario, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif agreed some basic parameters to guide their relations within the context of the country’s situation. The meeting between the two leaders was held in the wake of demands from some opposition members, including some leaders of the PML-N, for the resignation of President Asif Ali Zardari and the PPP ministers whose cases were reopened after the Supreme Court’s (SC’s) verdict that declared the NRO void ab initio and violative of certain provisions of the constitution. The two leaders agreed to protect the democratic system, ensure parliament’s supremacy, and continue the policy of reconciliation. In addition, the prime minister reiterated his government’s stance that it believes in impartial accountability, and pointed to the working at a good pace of the parliamentary committee on constitutional reforms, which would mean that the country would soon be informed about the abolition of the 17th Amendment. In turn, Shahbaz Sharif extended an olive branch by saying that political leaders should refrain from levelling allegations against each other, and called on political parties to play their role in strengthening institutions. Both participants of the one-to-one meeting agreed that all institutions should work within the scope of the constitution. Shahbaz Sharif threw in another sweetener by promising to take six PPP ministers as part of the expansion of the Punjab cabinet. The prime minister later briefed the president about his meeting with Shahbaz, and both the heads of state and government stressed that there should be no confrontation between discrete institutions of the state.
The reasonableness, sweetness and light emanating from this interaction is a welcome development given the state of the country. There are those in the opposition and some sections of the media who would dearly love to see the present dispensation fall apart amidst a welter of confrontations and conflict amongst political parties, different institutions of the state, and the government and the people. How realistic are these expectations? And how responsible are they in the light of the serious challenges facing the country?
Realistically, we have argued before in this space that none of the responsible mainstream parties’ leadership is interested in fruitless tension, confrontation, and conflict amongst the stakeholders in the present democratic setup. The SC, from behind whose back these devil-may-care ‘soldiers of fortune’ would dearly love to administer the final push that brings the whole temple crashing down Samson-like (including on their own heads), is on record during the NRO case as clarifying beyond a shadow of a doubt that their lordships are least interested in destabilising the system. If someone wishes to use the NRO verdict (a foregone conclusion) for their own agendas, the fault for that cannot be laid at the doorstep of the SC. There is a view of course, articulated amongst others by the chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Asma Jahangir, that the SC’s verdict may have overstepped the boundaries of judicial purview. The SC can and should be rescued from such adverse comment by the government setting up a credible, impartial accountability commission even now to go into all the cases of corruption, whether falling within the ambit of the NRO or not. It may not serve the purpose of cleaning up corruption if the government merely confines itself to following the letter of the SC’s instruction to change the chairman, prosecutor general and deputy prosecutor general of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). Instead, the spirit of the SC’s strictures against these NAB officials suggests that a new corner be turned, away from the tainted track record of NAB and its predecessor organisations and towards an accountability mechanism in which all can have confidence, even the accused.