Autocracy on the march
Rashed Rahman
The portents point to an overwhelming march towards autocracy. A country in the throes of unremitting crises in the political, economic and social fields will inevitably give rise to opposition and dissent. This is what the present dispensation has set out to control, if not quash. First it was the mainstream media. Newspapers are today a pale reflection of a once vibrant print media, even under the worst military dictatorships in our history, when journalists learnt to ‘creatively’ write between the lines, relying on the intelligence of the reader to discern the invisible fine print. Television, with its already deserved accolade of the ‘idiot box’, today is several lengths beyond even idiocy. Dictated content and choice of appearances, all subsumed within the looming weapon of the ‘cut-off’ switch, renders our plethora of ‘news’ channels unwatchable, except by the suffering few who are compelled to be tortured thus because of professional reasons. Now that the mainstream media has been ‘tamed’ it appears to be the turn of the social media.
When the internet, and subsequently social media, burst upon the stage, everyone welcomed this blossoming of freedom of expression and speech. With time, the flaws in giving everyone with a cellphone the ability to post just about anything, did betray the depth of foolishness that surprisingly resides hidden hitherto amongst humanity as a whole. Hopeful minds comforted themselves with the thought that this was terra incognita, and would soon settle down to more acceptable norms. That optimism has been refuted over time. The foolishness on social media has grown, if anything. Foolishness was perhaps the least worrying of the new phenomena that began to assert themselves on social media before long. These included criminal, exploitative, even abusive usage. Despite their holy vows to prevent such phenomena being allowed to exist, let alone grow, social media platforms and providers have failed to scotch this unacceptable face of the new means of global communication, not the least because of their non-transparent, befogged ‘principles’, vows of political correctness that soon were exposed as hollow and hypocritical.
But social media did have a positive side too. Dissenting views, that could not find an outlet in the mainstream media, proliferated in the ‘liberated’ universe of its new born brother. It is this dissenting opinion and its airing on social media that the Pakistani government is now intending to quash through the draconian amendments to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA). The new provisions are frightening, even to hardened souls who have lived and struggled through the darkest periods of our history. The alarm is at the unbelievably broad, virtually undefined provisions that virtually permit the authorities to pummel with threats of imprisonment and fines anyone daring to voice an opinion that does not meet with the approval of the present dispensation or its military establishment backers (the real power behind the throne). If the powers-that-be delude themselves that such draconian steps will not meet resistance, clearly they have forgotten our history and in the process failed to learn any lessons from it. The entire journalist community has come out against this autocratic, suppressive construct. A decisive struggle for freedom of speech and expression is on the cards.
As if this were not enough, the manipulation of the superior judiciary to extinguish its independence marches on unabated. The superior judiciary has been targeted since some judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) revealed publicly that they had suffered attempts at intimidation to deliver verdicts according to our ubiquitous intelligence services’ wishes. Since that sensational exposure, the entire superior judiciary, but especially the Supreme Court (SC) and the IHC have been targeted in order to ensure no adverse judgements would be forthcoming, allergic as the security state is to being thus challenged by a pillar of the state that willy-nilly we all pay lip service to the independence of.
First and foremost, through the 26th Amendment, rushed through parliament without so much as a nod towards parliamentary consultation, let alone debate, the carving out of the Constitutional Bench (CB) from the ranks of the SC judges has rendered the rest of the SC virtually toothless. With due regard and respect for the honourable Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) and his brother judges, this humiliation is beyond the pale of acceptance. Legal challenges to the 26thAmendment are perforce being heard by the CB, a creature that owes its birth to the same Amendment. Does this not represent an instance of being judge and jury in one’s own case? Perish the thought, because when this anomaly was pointed out by the counsel for former CJP Jawwad Khwaja, the CB rudely admonished him and even threatened to throw him out of court. I may be wrong, but this episode smacks of a guilty conscience. In the past, no matter how provocative the arguments of a counsel, the superior judiciary either responded with silence or pertinent arguments, never with rudeness beyond the ambit of behaviour expected from His Lordships.
This is not all. The IHC has received three judges from other High Courts, one of whom has been touted as the new Chief Justice of the IHC once the present incumbent is elevated to the SC. Five IHC judges in a letter to the CJP and the Chief Justices of the High Courts from whence the new transferred judges have been inducted into the IHC have raised objections to this ‘gerrymandering’ superior judiciary appointments. Lawyers’ bodies too are up in arms against such unprecedented manipulation. A ‘stacked’ SC, CB and IHC can only demean and destroy the respect owed to His Lordships, thereby destroying whatever little is still left of the public’s confidence in our superior judiciary.
Keep an eye on the burgeoning opposition to the two topics dealt with above. Journalists, lawyers, civil society and even political parties out of favour or still possessing a conscience, this is the joint front priming itself to come out against the blatant march of autocracy in our country.
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