An assessment of President Asif Zardari by Abbas Mehkari
IN his book Memoirs and Reflections, Dr Justice Nasim Hasan Shah, former chief justice of Pakistan and a member of the hanging bench, writes (all italics mine):
'I can now tell for the first time how the chief justice and I made an attempt to save Mr Bhutto’s life. With four judges (hailing from the Punjab) apparently in favour of upholding the judgment of the LHC convicting Mr Bhutto and sentencing him to death, while the remaining three judges (all non-Punjabis) being of different viewpoint, the responsibility and strain on the shoulders of CJ Anwar ul Haq was overwhelming.
'Being a patriot to the core he was deeply distressed and disturbed by the news reaching him that in case the court decided to hang Bhutto a very negative impression would be created in other provinces especially the province of Sindh … he conceived a device which he considered might salvage the situation … he knew my relations with Justice Dorab Patel were very cordial … it was suggested that I might have a detailed talk with him regarding the case and the general situation in the country.
'Being the senior-most judge of the faction favouring the view that Mr Bhutto was not guilty, he was in a position to handle the situation.
'The proposal put forward by Anwarul Haque was that a unanimous verdict may be handed down by the court so as to obviate all provincial acrimony.
'According to him the fairest solution would be if the Punjab judges could be persuaded to agree to the awarding of a lesser sentence to Mr Bhutto (thus saving his life) while the pro-Mr Bhutto judges might agree to hold him guilty….
'Being of the same view and eager to save Mr Bhutto’s life who had been very kind to me personally in as much as he had selected me to lead the Pakistan delegation to an international conference abroad, and also chosen me to be an ad hoc judge in the SC, I readily agreed to approach Justice Patel for ascertaining his views regarding the proposal.
'Both of us got together at his Islamabad residence and discussed the whole matter over an excellent dinner he hosted for me. Justice Patel was not at all agreeable to the proposition made by the CJ. According to him the question of a judge’s judgment was a matter of his conscience and that this may not be discussed.
'I emphasised the fairness of the CJ’s offer pointing out that it was consistent with the facts and law; however, unanimity in the larger interest of the federation should not be ignored…. I told Justice Dorab Patel that finding Mr Bhutto 'not guilty' was not consistent with the thinking of the four Punjabi judges; since all of them had come to the conclusion that the evidence in the (Punjab) High Court of the officials of the FSF who had participated in the killing proved their guilt ... undoubtedly, it was only the wish of Mr Bhutto which they had carried out. I, therefore, emphasised that no attempt was being made to change or modify the judgment of any judge.
'Despite an 80-minute conversation in a friendly and courteous atmosphere … I came home very disappointed.
The next day, as Yahya Bakhtiar was continuing his pleading for Mr Bhutto, I asked him to address the court on the matter of the sentence and the mitigation considerations for reducing the sentence. He totally ignored my interjection and stated rather rudely that he was only concerned in establishing that Mr Bhutto was not guilty and deserved to be acquitted.
'It is my view that the CJ and I threw two lifelines to Mr Bhutto, and his supporters on the bench, more especially Justice Dorab Patel, and his panel of lawyers disregarded both of them. The Bhutto family and its supporters regarded the four Punjabi judges as the villains in this tense drama whereas the truth is quite the other way.
'The persons actually responsible for the sad outcome of this Greek tragedy were his friends and sympathisers who obstinately stuck to an unwise and incorrect course of action.'
So, Justices Dorab Patel, M. Haleem, and Safdar Shah, who acquitted Bhutto, were responsible for his premeditated murder?
Meanwhile, back at the ranch Oh what fun(!), as we see the head spooks of yesteryear, all of them belonging at one time or another to the Mother of All Agencies and before that to the poor Pakistan Army which has been made to bear the crosses for all of these scoundrels, tear into one another with a vengeance that can only be the product of dysfunctional organisations.
What really, really gladdens my heart is to see retired majors say to retired lieutenant generals’ faces that they are lying!!
They can kill each other for all I care, as long as they leave our political leaders alone, be it Nawaz Sharif or Asif Zardari. One has lived in this Land of the Pure long enough to know full well that far worse is yet to come. Just you wait until cooked-up personal stories come out in the press. We know, for we have seen it all, ad nauseum, before.
But try as they might, they will only fall flat on their faces as always. They should realise that this is no longer the Pakistan of the 1990s when there was hardly any access to the Internet. This is another country, and the more they persevere with their stupid and self-destructing ways the more they will harm themselves and their institutions. Well Godspeed to you sirs, for the sooner you self-destruct the better for this poor country and its hapless people.
PS Shujaat Hussain, with Mushahid ‘Mandela’ Husain faithfully by his side, had some gall to say that Nawab Akbar Bugti’s coffin should now be handed over to his family. He was sitting in the Commando’s lap when the nawab was committed to his grave in a wooden coffin padlocked with the cheapest Chinese lock, with just eight ‘security agencies’ people looking on. Just when will these people stop insulting our intelligence?
kamranshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
Since Gilgit-Baltistan was part of the Jammu and Kashmir state, its fate became linked to which way the disputed state would go. This was implicitly the reason for the six-decades-long delay in restructuring the governance of the region