“we, the people of Pakistan ------- Do hereby, through our representatives in the National Assembly, adopt, enact and give to ourselves, this Constitution”.
According to the experts of the Constitutional matters, the court in this option is referring to Constitutional option of early elections. In the eyes of the court, the Prime Minister and the President have failed to fulfill the promise made in their oath besides falling short of the Constitutional eligibility to be a member of the Parliament including the President.
Thus, the political pundits are foreseeing elections within this year. They are, however, unable to understand that whether the PPP would hold these early elections willingly or perforce. According to the PPP insiders, the ruling party might accept the option of early elections even as early as before the Senate polls due in March, but it would not surrender to a caretaker setup for next elections.
The PPP’s outburst against the judiciary and the PML-N is obviously for gaining its bargaining chips in their dealing with the establishment. But the worthy establishment seems to be not in a mood to render any new deal as a ‘give and take’ option. They only want to ‘take’ away from the PPP without giving them anything in reward. The establishment in its self-styled argument claims that the one who is seeking pardon does not deserve anything more than that.
That is why perhaps, Interior Minister Rehman Malik rushed to address a press conference wherein he had nothing to present except a document that was made public by the Saudi authorities some five years back. Yes, he highlighted the same document that former intelligence chief of Saudi Arabia Prince Muqrin had shown to the media before taking PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif back to his country as the guarantor of the deal between him and former dictator General Musharraf.
Now the interior minister’s underlining right after the Supreme Court’s verdict against his government as well as the President that Sharif also got pardon from the same dictator clearly indicates the PPP’s position. The ruling party in so many words is arguing that if the court accepts Musharraf’s pardon for Nawaz Sharif, then it must accept the same dictator’s favors to the PPP leadership in terms of NRO.
Net result of this skirmish between the executive and judiciary on the overall economy was reflective from the stock market on Tuesday. It suffered a heavy loss both in terms of sentiment and sharp declining value of shares. The market was on a recovery drive till mid-day, but the disclosure of the court’s decision came down as a bomb shell and it fell by over 100 points on the Karachi Stock Exchange’s KSE-100 Index.
The court’s decision and bizarre reactions from the government have simply perturbed the daily wager who was already living in a miserable condition having no bread and butter at all. Daily wagers in the country are already forced to commit suicide or ironically sell their children as the chances of their livelihood have simply dried out due to energy crisis, war on terror, and lack of political instability. Now these new tensions between the judiciary and executive have simply added insult to the injury of commoners.