Pakistan's top court nullifies amnesty for Zardari, other officials

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By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 17, 2009; A12

ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's Supreme Court nullified on Wednesday a controversial deal that had given President Asif Ali Zardari and thousands of other government officials amnesty from prosecution on corruption charges, a decision likely to further weaken Zardari's shaky hold on power.

The ruling could open the door to additional legal challenges against Zardari. Although he still has immunity from prosecution under the constitution, opponents plan to contest that by arguing that Zardari is technically ineligible for the presidency.

The court decision comes as the United States pushes for an expanded strategic partnership with Pakistan to help combat the growing threat from Islamist extremist groups, including the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The United States is sending 30,000 additional troops to neighboring Afghanistan and wants Pakistan to step up efforts on its side of the border to keep militants from finding refuge there.

But Zardari's ability to make decisions about the level of Pakistani cooperation with the United States has been compromised by his struggle to simply hold on to his job -- a task likely to be made more difficult by the court ruling.

The ripple effects

The decision to overturn the amnesty deal had been expected, but the 17-member Supreme Court panel went further, requesting that Swiss authorities open years-old corruption cases against Zardari that had been set aside.

It was unclear whether the ruling Wednesday would have any bearing on the decisions of the Swiss courts. Zardari is suspected to have received millions in illegal commissions from two Swiss companies, and he was convicted in 2003 on money laundering charges by a Swiss magistrate. The conviction was later suspended. Zardari has denied the allegations and has said they are politically motivated.

The Pakistani court's ruling had the immediate effect of reopening cases against thousands of politicians and bureaucrats that had been frozen under the amnesty deal. Four government ministers had been protected under the amnesty. One, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, had been convicted and may now be forced to appeal his conviction.

The amnesty deal, known as the National Reconciliation Ordinance, was forged in 2007 as part of an agreement between former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and then-President Pervez Musharraf. The U.S.-backed deal allowed Bhutto and her husband, Zardari, to return to Pakistan without facing prosecution over long-standing corruption allegations.

Bhutto was assassinated months later, and Zardari succeeded her as leader of the Pakistan People's Party. After the PPP won elections last year and Musharraf stepped down, Zardari became president.

President vs. the people

In the hearings leading up to the court's decision, the government had not defended the unpopular deal. But the ruling is likely to be a major distraction for the government as prosecutors dust off old cases. The Supreme Court said it would establish a special commission to ensure the cases are prosecuted vigorously.

Zardari spokesman Farhatullah Babar said the government would respect the court's decision, but he reiterated that the president, by virtue of his office, remained immune from prosecution under the constitution. "We believe this does not affect the president of Pakistan," he said.

Others had different ideas. Roedad Khan, a retired civil servant who was one of the petitioners who had challenged the amnesty, said the decision would "destroy" Zardari.

Khan called Zardari "a man who has looted and plundered this poor country. Is there one law for Zardari and one law for the 160 million people of Pakistan? No, there is one law for everyone."

Zardari is deeply unpopular in Pakistan, in large part because of persistent rumors of corruption. He spent 11 years in prison in Pakistan but was not convicted.

Still, opponents argue that he is not eligible for the presidency because of the suspended Swiss conviction and because he fled Pakistan rather than appear in court to face charges. Under the constitution, a person convicted of a crime is ineligible to be president.

Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, a veteran lawyer who argued that the amnesty deal should be nullified, called the decision "a victory for truth" and "a victory for the country." He predicted that "many public office holders will be relieved of their services" because of the ruling.

Wednesday's decision deepens the divide between Zardari and the Supreme Court, particularly its independent-minded chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. The chief justice had been removed from his job by Musharraf, and Zardari angered many lawyers because he took months to reinstate Chaudhry.

In addition to facing judicial challenges, Zardari's weak civilian government has had an uneasy relationship with the military, which has run this country for about half its history. On a visit to Pakistan this week, Gen. David H. Petraeus, chief of U.S. Central Command, told Pakistani journalists that he saw no reason to think that the military intended to seize power. Special correspondent Shaiq Hussain contributed to this report.

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Pakistan's Zardari criticized over U.S. alliance, insurgency and shortages - washingtonpost.com

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After little more than a year in office, Zardari faces criticism over U.S. alliance, battle with insurgents and widespread shortages

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 16, 2009

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- President Asif Ali Zardari, who entered office 14 months ago on a wave of post-dictatorship goodwill and sympathy for his slain wife, Benazir Bhutto, now faces growing public anger and disillusionment over his remote presidency. Some critics are urging him to step down, and others predict he will be forced from office within months.

In interviews, opinion articles and talk shows, a diverse range of people are denouncing Zardari as a corrupt and indifferent ruler. They accuse him of living in posh isolation while his country battles Islamist extremists, energy and food shortages, and a host of other problems.

Army officials, although considered unlikely to stage a coup, have made no secret of their unhappiness over Zardari's compliant relationship with Washington. The United States is allied with Pakistan in the war against extremists, but army leaders here remain wary of U.S. ties with India, and they were infuriated by the controls on military spending included in a recent American aid package for Pakistan.

Poor and working-class Pakistanis, meanwhile, blame the government for protracted shortages of gas, electricity and staple foods. They also feel increasingly unprotected, as suicide bombings have killed more than 350 people in two months.

"There is a sense that the government is adrift and rudderless at a time the nation needs strong leadership," said S. Rifaat Hussain, a professor at Quaid-i-Azam University, adding that Zardari is widely seen as using his power for personal benefit. "He has alienated the best people and filled his cabinet with those who sit around waiting for orders. There is huge disillusionment."

Zardari's deepening unpopularity has put Washington in a bind because of its avowed commitment to bolstering democratic politics in Pakistan after a decade of military rule. If he is forced from power, either on old corruption charges or through a collapse of the ruling coalition, analysts said, Washington might have to deal with new leaders who are less friendly and no better able to solve Pakistan's problems.

Zardari rarely gives long interviews or unscripted speeches, but aides insist he is not the man his critics portray. They describe him as hardworking, tough-minded and bursting with ideas for improving the economy. They say he is not corrupt, and attribute such accusations to a mix of political rivalry and the country's sensationalistic TV talk-show culture.

"The president lives in a glass house, and he knows his responsibilities to the country. I can assure you there is no wheeling and dealing going on," said Fauzia Wahab, a legislator and spokeswoman for the ruling Pakistan People's Party. "People keep bringing up old cases, but it is just to humiliate and ridicule him. To be negative is fashionable."

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said in an interview Saturday that Zardari is the victim of certain political groups, including right-wing religious parties, "conspiring against democracy." Malik added: "The president is progressive and determined to pursue the war on terror. Some groups don't like that."

Legally, the issue most likely to bring Zardari down is corruption. A businessman known as "Mr. Ten Percent" when his late wife was prime minister in the 1990s, he was accused of orchestrating kickback schemes and spent nearly eight years in prison on various charges, although he was never convicted of a crime.

Last week, charges resurfaced from a 1994 case in which Pakistani naval officials allegedly took huge commissions in the sale of three French submarines. A French newspaper reported that Zardari was also paid more than $3 million and may have been complicit in the killings of 11 French maritime engineers in Karachi in 2002. Pakistani officials denied the charges, noting that he was in prison at the time.

For the moment at least, Zardari cannot be prosecuted on any past charges -- an immunity he gained under a provisional constitutional change decreed by his predecessor, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, before leaving office. But parliament unexpectedly did not give the decree final approval last month, and it is due to expire Nov. 28.

After that date, the Supreme Court, led by the iconoclastic chief justice whose reinstatement Zardari fought to prevent, could declare his election illegal and reopen cases against him and some of his aides. Even though he will probably not be sent back to prison, the specter of prosecution could deal Zardari a fatal political blow, leaving leaders scrambling to form a new government in the middle of a war against terrorism.

"It is clear the cases will be reopened eventually, but corruption is not the real issue," said Athar Minallah, a lawyer and former aide to Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. "The president should never be removed illegally, but if we are to build a stable Pakistan, we need to reestablish the rule of law and the constitution."

The other major strike against Zardari is the public perception that he is too close to the United States.

Despite generous U.S. aid offers and the bilateral thaw that followed the return of civilian government, many Pakistanis are convinced the United States wants to take over their country and use the anti-terrorism effort as an excuse to seize its nuclear arsenal.

"There is a lot of suspicion and antagonism," said Hussain, the professor. "Zardari needs to get out and tell people that the government wants democracy, but not one that is subservient to American interests."

Wahab said she was stunned at the ferocious domestic criticism of the U.S. aid package, which would give Pakistan $7.5 billion over five years. She said that Zardari had worked hard to win international aid for Pakistan, and that his dream is to build an economy that could compete with India's and China's. "A lot of good things have happened in these 18 months," she said, "but no one ever talks about them."

Yet Pakistanis interviewed last week, from students to shopkeepers to retirees, complained that the Zardari government has not delivered relief from any of the country's major problems. All said they had lost the hope they had felt when military rule was replaced by a civilian government.

"Prices keep going up and bombs keep going off, but our leaders don't seem to care," said Jamal Hassan, 26, who sells socks in a bazaar. "Everyone thought Zardari would become a changed person and a mature politician, but he didn't change and he didn't deliver. We don't want dictatorship back, but since then everything has gotten worse."

Pakistan Lifts Longtime Ban on Political Activities in Restive Tribal Areas

By SALMAN MASOOD

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — President Asif Ali Zardari announced Friday that he was lifting a longtime ban on political activities in the restive tribal regions in the northwest, hoping to reduce the influence of the Taliban and Islamic militancy in the areas.

The seven semiautonomous tribal regions have never been fully incorporated into the country’s legal and political system. They are instead still governed by a set of 100-year-old rules, known as Frontier Crimes Regulations, dating from the British empire.

Rights groups have long denounced the rules as draconian and Pakistan’s political parties have urged the government to do away with them, calling them a dark legacy of British colonial rule.

“Today, I am announcing the permission of political activities in the F.A.T.A. to bring them into the main political stream,” Mr. Zardari said in a live broadcast, referring to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, as the region is formally known.

Mr. Zardari chose a symbolic moment to make the announcement: the eve of the national holiday marking Pakistan’s 62nd year of independence from the British Empire.

But analysts here said the announcement also seemed timed to coincide with a visit by Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special envoy for the region, who is scheduled to arrive in Islamabad on Saturday.

The ban on political activities and parties had created a vacuum that was increasingly exploited by militants and religious extremists, allowing the Taliban and Al Qaeda to tighten their hold on the region as they mounted attacks on tribal elders and the area’s political overseers appointed by the central government, analysts and political workers here have said.

“Now, political parties can organize themselves in the tribal areas and political process can start,” said Sheik Mansoor Ahmed, an official of the governing Pakistan Peoples Party. “It was a longstanding demand.”

Farhatullah Khan Babar, the spokesman for Mr. Zardari, said that under the Constitution, the president was empowered to make regulations for the tribal areas, giving him the authority to lift the ban.

The reform package now envisages broad and fundamental changes in the colonial-era regulations, which had given the officials administering the areas, called political agents, unbridled power and authority.

Under the reforms, arbitrary arrest of men, women and children would be curtailed; a special judicial commission similar to a high court would be set up; and the finances of the political agents would be audited.

Still, the announcement was not welcomed uniformly.

Mr. Zardari’s coalition partners sharply distanced themselves from it.

“We were not consulted,” said Muhammad Zahid Khan, a senator belonging to the Awami National Party, A.N.P., a nationalist party that leads the government in the North-West Frontier Province.

“Whatever good or bad comes out of this decision, we do not own it,” he said.

Rights groups and analysts expressed concern over the lack of accord between the Pakistan Peoples Party and its coalition partners.

“The lack of agreement between the coalition partners would mean that the changes would become controversial and the whole process would not remain smooth,” said Ibn-e-Abdu Rahman, a director of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a private group.

“So far, as permission for political activities is concerned, it is a very healthy development,” he said. “It is an advance and would enable the people to gradually come out of the stagnant tribal relations.”

But he warned that there were still some vested interest groups in the tribal regions “that do not want complete democratization of the areas.”

Ahmed Rashid, a journalist based in Lahore and the best-selling author of the book “Taliban,” said he felt that the changes were introduced now under pressure by the United States and Britain.

“It is a good move,” Mr. Rashid said, “but I wish it had been done a year ago.”

Far-reaching Fata Reforms Unveiled

By Syed Irfan Raza

Friday, 14 Aug, 2009 | 06:07 AM PST |

ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari announced on Thursday political, judicial and administrative reforms for the tribal areas, allowing political activities in Fata, setting up an appellate tribunal, curtailing arbitrary powers of political agents, giving people right to appeal and bail, excluding women and children from the territorial responsibility clause and envisaging audit of accounts by the auditor general. Addressing a ceremony held in the Presidency to mark the 62nd Independence Day, the president announced the reforms package that had been worked out in consultation with all stakeholders and approved a day earlier in a meeting. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani attended the meeting. ‘President Asif Ali Zardari tonight announced major legal and political reforms in the tribal areas to extricate them from a century of bondage and subservience and usher them into the mainstream of national life, describing it as a gift to the nation and the tribal people on the nation’s 62nd Independence Day,’ said presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar. He said the reforms envisaged extension of the Political Parties Order of 2002 to the tribal areas and changes in the century-old anachronistic Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) to make it responsive to human rights. After amendments to the law approved on Wednesday, the powers of arbitrary arrest and detention without the right to bail had been curtailed, he said. ‘The FCR was a draconian law under which there was no provision of appeal, wakeel or daleel (lawyer or reasoning) against the orders of the executive,’ the spokesman said. The tribesmen were subject to the whims of administration officials as people were arrested and kept in jail for years without trial under the FCR, he said. A person could be sent to jail for three years without trial. The jail term could be extended indefinitely. Under the territorial responsibility clause, women and children were being jailed. The administration will have no arbitrary powers of arrest as checks have been placed on them. The accused shall be brought before the authority concerned within 24 hours of arrest. They will have the right to bail. Women and children below 16 years of age shall not be arrested under the Collective Responsibility Clause of the FCR. The changes lay down a time limit for disposal of cases. The spokesman said a major initiative was in the field of judicial reform. The package envisages setting up the Fata Tribunal with powers similar to those of the high courts. The tribunal shall have powers of revision of orders and judgments of the appellate authority. The spokesman said the funds received and disbursed by political agents would be audited by the Auditor General of Pakistan. In his address, President Zardari said Pakistan was created through a democratic struggle and it would be made strong and prosperous through democracy. ‘As we celebrate we should also pause and reflect whether and where we are going. Unfortunately, over the years as democracy was trampled, an extremist mindset was allowed to grow. I don’t want to go into who nurtured the militants and how they were aided. It is all too well known.’ The militants, he said, posed the greatest threat to the country as they were out to destroy the very fabric of society. ‘They want to impose their political and ideological agenda on the people of Pakistan through force and coercion. They reject the state, the Constitution, democracy and, indeed, our very way of life,’ he said. He said the government had tried negotiations but the move was rejected. ‘Now they are on the run. The nation stands united and all parties and parliament have rejected militants and militancy. Our valiant defence forces stood up against this new and great threat to the country,’ he said and thanked parties, parliament, the people and the forces. The president congratulated the nation and said that millions who had fled their homes in Swat and Malakand had started returning home. ‘But a bigger challenge awaits us. In the long run we must defeat the militant mindset to defend our country, our democracy, our institutions and our way of life.’ Praising the people of tribal areas, the president said they were being governed by a hundred-year-old obsolete system of administration that did not allow their creative potential to come into full play. He said the law had been changed in accordance with the aspirations of the people and democratic principles.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/13+far-reaching+fata+reforms+unveiled-za-12

Former Pakistani President's 2007 Emergency Rule Declared Unconstitutional

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 1, 2009

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 31 -- Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled Friday that former president Pervez Musharraf violated the constitution by declaring emergency rule in 2007, a verdict widely viewed as a rebuke to the retired general's military regime.

The ruling, which prompted jubilant chants by the crowd in the packed courtroom, raises the possibility that the federal government could bring treason charges against Musharraf and further volatility to this unstable nation. The decision also invalidated judicial appointments made by Musharraf under a provisional constitution during the six weeks of emergency rule.

"I think this is a decision that has established independence for the judiciary in Pakistan," said Hamid Khan, former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, who represented the group that filed a petition against the emergency order. "It will certainly be a boost for our democracy and will block the way for any future military adventurer."

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, an opponent of Musharraf, described the verdict in a statement as "most welcome" and "a triumph of the democratic principles, a stinging negation of dictatorship."

The verdict was delivered by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, who was sacked for the second time in November 2007, along with dozens of other judges, when Musharraf declared emergency rule, suspended the constitution, shut down television stations and imprisoned opponents. At the time, Musharraf justified his actions by citing growing extremism in the country, but many saw the actions as an attempt to ensure his political survival, given that court was deliberating whether to disqualify him from proceeding with a second five-year term.

Musharraf's moves fueled a protest movement of lawyers and civil society advocates that swept the country and brought about the reinstatement of the chief justice and other judges in March.

"After these two years of the movement, there's a change in the mindset of Pakistan. They do not want any military intervention. They want matters to be moving according to the constitution," said Athar Minallah, a leader of the lawyers' movement. "This will have far-reaching consequences," he added, referring to the decision.

Chaudhry delivered the verdict Friday evening in a 45-minute speech that the assembled crowd strained to hear over the rain that hammered down on the Supreme Court building's vaulted roof. But the words "illegal" and "unconstitutional" were heard frequently enough that the result was clear, and the crowd celebrated with chants of "long live the Supreme Court!" Television news footage showed people reveling in the streets in Pakistani cities.

The court did not invalidate the decisions made by the judges Musharraf appointed, but said their jobs no longer exist. It also said that Parliament should decide which laws passed under emergency rule would stand.

Musharraf, who now lives in London, stepped down in August 2008 after nearly nine years in power, facing the threat of impeachment. The Supreme Court summoned him to discuss the case this week, but neither he nor an attorney attended.

The federal government could now prosecute Musharraf, according to lawyers at the courthouse. Nazir Ahmed, a member of Britain's House of Lords who was present for Friday's verdict, said that evidence was being gathered in London on possible breaches of international law "relating to abductions, torture and war crimes committed by the former dictator."

Minallah, the activist lawyer, said, "If the people of this country want the prosecution of Musharraf, the entire pressure will shift to the Parliament and the federal government. So that will be the first impact of this decision."

Special correspondent Shaiq Hussain contributed to this report.