From mother-in-law to martial law | Syed Talat Hussain

Syed Talat Hussain

It is misleading to say that Pakistan, an embattled nuclear country of over two hundred and twenty-two million people, is facing a political meltdown. We have been at this point so frequently that any call to attention of an impending emergency sounds boringly familiar, evoking yawns. 

And yet it is what it is: the Bandiyal Court’s final warning to the Shehbaz government about the consequences of not releasing funds for the Punjab elections on the 14th of May has gone unheeded. The government has stayed with its stance that the parliament has declined the request for the funds and it cannot bypass that restriction. In fact, today the meeting of allies at the PM House has reinforced this view: it has added more bite to the stance by its reiteration that the petition the Bandiyal Court is using to make the government pay up the money has been dismissed by four dissenting judges. The speeches that followed in the parliament including the one by the finance minister too have made it clear that not a penny will be released without the laid-down legal process.  But most important is the letter that the Speaker of the National Assembly has addressed to the Chief Justice and his favourite judges. In sum, the letter tells off the court in a stern language. The parliament is set to consider a Contempt of Parliament law that would possibly entail de-notifying any judge who transgresses the limits of his institutional responsibilities.   

This is blaring the bugles of a full-scale war. This would anger the court that has already said that the cost of disobedience of the court order is pretty obvious: generally meaning “off with the political head of the head of government”, ie PM Shehbaz. 

Also, the Chief Justice has a personal issue at stake as well: his family (mother-in-law of all the relations) has been dragged into the un-controversy through leaked audio in which she is heard along with a chirpy friend, wife of Imran Khan’s counsel, vocalizing her quirky desire for quick elections. Judges hearing this petition under suo moto powers are also discussed in the conversation and opponents of the PTI are cursed with “blindness”! Uff! The desperation! Leakers of the audio wanted to show how the Bandiyal Court is not an independent agent and is influenced by outside factors, which include apart from close relatives, former chief justice Saqib Nisar whose leaked audio (another one) records his advice to hold the PM in contempt of the court. 

The Bandiyal Court has the option of diving deep into the fray of the leaked audios and settling scores with those who have turned the CJ’s inlaws into social media outlaws. It has chosen not to do that. That doesn’t mean that it has forgiven or forgotten the insult and emotional injury caused by the mother-in-law of all leaks. 

The bottled-up anger might come out through a legal barrel and shoot the government in the face. Besides the Court has its entire legal standing staked on either getting the Shehbaz Government to cough up the funds or punish it for disobedience. There is no third way.  It might show time-bound flexibility (24 hours to comply or else!) but that is about all.

This places the Shehbaz government on the edge of a precipice. If the PM is held in contempt of court, he will have to go, regardless of how controversial the decision may be. This will set off the process of the House electing another leader of the house which can take some weeks. Without a government head in place, the issue of the release of money for polls can hang fire (unless the Bandiyal Court use the hiatus to take charge of the disbursement of the funds on its own, which will be another level of Rule by Gavel). Even then there is no guarantee that the next PM will take a line different from what the Speaker has taken in his letter to the house that elects him has taken in its three resolutions condemning the Supreme Court's high-handedness. 

The Court might not get its desire to hold Punjab polls on the set date, but it will have the trophy of the PM’s head in its hands, and the country will plunge deeper into more uncertainty. As things stand today, the outcome of the newest meltdown does not look nice. It is do or die. Or more accurately, do and die! A kamikaze operation. That’s what you get when toxic egos clash, battling each other to death in the name of the Constitution. If Pakistan plunges into a deadly dysfunction will the Army watch it from the margins and twiddle its neutral thumbs? Interestingly, in one audio leak, the issue of martial law came up, with the friend of the chief justice’s mother-in-law saying that if the elections did not take place then there will be martial law. To which the mother-in-law says rather remorsefully, “But they are not willing to impose martial law.” Tut! Tut!