Constitution may be amended for BB

[niaz]

Mr. Niaz, As ususal your posts are based on true facts and are always great source of learning and guidence.
Again every word of your post is true and we all are witness to it.
Neither, I personally have any problems with BB taking the top post, its only on principal grouds I believe if she or any one else has done corruption or broke the law should face the justice.
In my personal analysis, I also doubt her loyalties and that of her clan.

I also believe We should play our role, so I seek your guidance to tell us whom should we give a chance and what role shall we play?

One thing is clear Zardari is totally unaceptable. I can tell you he was the one who has put Pakistan 100 years behind. I know few huge European corporations who came to Pakistan for investment and he as usual demanded % and they diverted to UAE and India.
That was the time when west was looking for some country to produce there products at competitive prices since that time almost every big corporation has invested either in China, UAE and later in India.
Last thing, I also consider N. Sharif the most stupid living man and would not like to see him back in office, ever.

Dear Batman,

You give me more credit than due. I am just aged man who has seen Pakistan since its inception. I was lucky to have good education and keep an open mind but that is all. Therefore, despite the fact that humility is not one my virtues, I admit that I am not worthy of giving guidance to a third party.

Like you, I also rate age old virtues such as honesty, fortitude and personal integrity very highly. That is why I also admire ( not necessarily like) Indian political leaders who posess such virtues. Allama Iqbal has said:

Ausaf - e- jawan mardaan, haq goeey wa bebaaki
Allah kay shairon ko aati naheen robaahi

Meaning that qualities of men are truthfulness and fearlessness. Allah's lions do not know fox's trickery.

Most muslim leaders of the Independence movement, even those opposed to it such as Bacha Khan of the NWFP were honest and straight forward men, but now there seems to be drought of such leaders in Pakistan. I dont like BB either ( I also personally know some one who was asked a share in profits by Asif Zardaari as a pre condition to get his proposal approved). But at this time greatest danger to the state of Pakistan is from within; primarily from religious extremists and to a lesser extent from the ethnic nationalists. There are only three moderate liberal parties with any support in Pakistan ( PPP, MQM and ANP). Had high hopes from Imraan, but he turned out be a hypocrite; despite having been the biggest fornicator, now supports the MMA and has failed to condemn the suicide bombers.Thus Pakistan has to make do with what she has got. BB being the lesser evil. People get what they deserve.

 

[Adux]

Easy to laught at others.

, standing at about 6.5 per cent.

.

Source of the article please,When did the double of 2.5 become 6.5...guess the author is pretty bad in mathematics. Anyways he is wrong about his figures.

India's inflation is 4.4% with a growth rate of nearly 10%. While Pakistan has a growth rate of 6.5% with an inflation of 8.4%.
As a person who did his thesis on chinese banking structure. I am not all awed at the claims put forth by them. Chinese havent even taken care of their growing NPA's, Chinese bubble will burst pretty soon. The sheer number of bad loans and bad credit policy is mind-boggling. They love the accounting policy, showing losses in future years and writing off bad loans faster than i can say "chewbacka"

 

[Bull]

What the hell you know about GDP and inflation? .

No, i dont.

Do you know before 1999 at occasions N.Sharif government failed to pay the salaries of government employees and state bank was dictated by N.Sharif. I know much more than this and you are in no position to teach us who performed better..

I didnt say he did badly or he was a destructor. What i said was that Pakistan was on the verge of collapse because of sanctions. Once 9/11 happened and WoT was launched Bush needed pakistan to be on his side and agreed money to keep the 'state functioning'. Pakistan has gained a lot from this. There are lot of arab money coming in, and that if im not mistaken is aimed mainly at real estate development. Pakistan like India is a developing country which suffers from chronic infra shortages, like power. Let me know what investments are made in this sector?

I analysed it a lot and reached to the conclusion it can only be 'miricale' so it was not Musharraf, it was Allah who chose Musharraf's rule for his blessings..

Now how can i counter it. Why do you bring in Allah into these sort of things. Any of my counter arguments can easily be bend to make as if i undermined your god Allah.

I must mention that I don't expect Allah to any thing for me, I believe Allah chose the people and is responsible for every happening around the world and this faith also relives me of tensions..

Whatever makes you happy!!!

So, consider becoming Muslim and being blessed like Musharraf...

]No thanks. Im very happy with my relegion which gives me enough freedom to do what i want to. And also i will never be a muslim which as per me is a a very suffocating one and moreover i wont allow my women folks to be hidden under a black burqa.

Comming to the point of inflation. Do you know what is the biggest import bill of Pakistan?It's fuel and do you know the prices and amount of fuel we imported in 1999 and today! No you don't, so don't try to pull eggs out of your ***..

Well China too consumes oil, tonnes of it and imports a lot of it too. Compre their inflation and GDP growth rate, and do that for India too.

Pakistan lack basic industry as compare to demand, some how miraculosly people of Pakistan got rich overnight which resulted in mani fold increase in imports so this inflation was a surge and if economy sustain will continue to similar level until people quit luxury life or we build enough basic industry to meet the market demand..

You seriously mean it!!!

Mama, I will see how long your military sustain the occupation, I expect you comming to terms very soon.A Muslim Indian friend of mine told me that Siachen is termed as frozen hell in IA and only muslim soldiers are sent there as they were in Kargil.

Well somebody was saying IA dont have Muslim soldiers at all, now they are saying they are being used to man the most vital one.

 

[Bull]

Easy to laught at others.

New Delhi has long touted its superior capital markets and banking system as a major competitive advantage over China, where real commercial banking is only two decades old and the central bank self-confessedly ill-equipped to independently handle the vagaries of a modern economy. Yet, the People’s Bank of China has adroitly kept the nation’s inflation rate well within the global average of 2.5 per cent while India’s inflation rate is currently more than double that, standing at about 6.5 per cent.

More embarrassingly for India, the bulk of China’s inflation is rooted in surging oil prices and a sudden spurt in the domestic cost of food oil, eggs, meat and grain, which have all logged double-digit increases in recent months. Once these costs are stripped out, core inflation in China can be seen to have held steady at less than 1 per cent over the past five years, Jonathan Anderson, chief Asian economist with UBS bank in Hong Kong, said recently. That is an astonishing fact, given China is enjoying record international trade surpluses ($177 billion in 2006) and has a raging hot domestic economy that grew at close to 10 per cent last year. Massive export earnings, helped by China’s under-valued renminbi, have also been flooding the financial system and creating asset bubbles in various areas such as real estate and the stockmarket (one of the world’s best-performing in 2006). Wages are also rising in the boom towns along China’s eastern coast and spiralling demand for raw materials are pushing commodity prices to record levels.

Yet, a retiree in Beijing can pick up his usual monthly supplies for pretty much the same price as he paid two years ago largely because of two reasons: an inflation-wary governor at the helm of the central bank, and an investment-crazy corporate sector whose current investments are running at about 45 per cent of the total gross domestic product, according to official reports.

Zhou Xiaochuan, the professorial head of the People’s Bank of China, has repeatedly stated inflation is China’s financial public enemy No. 1, and his actions have left no one in doubt of how seriously he means that. Over the past nine months, Zhou has raised interest rates twice and acted to curb bank lending a record four times in the same period, mostly by increasing the national credit reserve ratio. As a result, inflation is currently down to 2.2 per cent after climbing to 2.8 per cent in December 2006. China’s money supply (M2) also rose only 15.9 per cent in January 2007, less than the 16.9 per cent it climbed to in December 2006.

More significantly, Stephen Green, chief economist with Standard Chartered Bank, Shanghai, says the keystone factor in China’s low inflation is that companies here have been utilising their cash to make huge investments in building new capacities in numerous industries — from steel to TVs to computers. The resulting glut in products and services is holding down prices, says Green, as companies struggle to win customers and fend off ever-increasing competition. In contrast, India is still a supply-driven economy, where sellers can command sky-high prices from consumers aching to satiate years, if not decades, of their pent-up demand for products and services. While this applies across the board, it is especially true for those semi-luxury and luxury goods and services that more and more people now consume, but which are still not a significant part of India’s consumer price index (CPI). The cost of these items is substantially higher in India than China, both because of India’s high and compounding taxes, and because of the differing overall cost structures in both countries. Consider this: a 19-inch colour TV from Haier costs about Rs 3,000 in China and twice that in India, a Thai meal for two at a restaurant in Beijing costs about Rs 1,000, while in Delhi it would cost at least twice as much.

Part of the reason for the high price of such goods in India is that consumers here are more willing to pay for their new toys than their counterparts in China. “In developing economies, producers charge high prices just because they can,” says Edward Bell, head (planning), Ogilvy & Mather, Beijing. “Consumers are not sophisticated and unwittingly pay premiums for ordinary products.”

China’s inflation is also low because unlike India, the retail market is very crowded and competitive, making stores wary of consumer ire over rising prices. “If I raise my prices, people will just buy from someone else,” says Li He, a vegetable vendor in Beijing. “There is a supermarket down the road, where things are really cheap.” In India, vendors and stores raise prices more readily because real estate and capital shortages, regulatory and administrative difficulties with starting businesses, not to mention the necessity of dealing with local political hoodlums, have inhibited natural competition in retailing.




In some respects, these differences underline the gap in the economic maturity of the Chinese and Indian economies. But they also hint at the different political economy forming in both nations. Policy makers consistently have to choose between pleasing industry and consumers, and in China, authorities have learned to strike an awkward but effective balance between the two. While Communist Party oligarchs and powerful businessmen certainly extract their pound of economic flesh from self-serving policies, the government is also watchful of how much pain citizens are able to bear. Since the Communist Party’s fraying legitimacy is based in large part on its ability to provide economic benefits to its people, the government is at pains to keep inflation under control. Price rises could quickly alienate large parts of the population and further stoke the already deep disillusionment with the Communist Party across the country, says a professor of economics in Beijing who asked not to be identified.

In India, an analysis of recent industrial regulations and tax incidence shows that policy makers have been handing out sops to industries, and often specific industrialists, without an equal concern for protecting the economic interests of consumers. For example, the top effective tax rate for individuals is about 35 per cent, while for numerous booming industries, such as telecom, it is just about 17 per cent.

More significantly, China, like India, is also experiencing massive increases in the stockmarket and the price of real estate. But Beijing has acted fast to clamp down on speculative demand for housing by starting to enforce a land appreciation tax and increasing the amount of money buyers need to put down on purchases. Chinese authorities have also defended the stockmarket from speculators by suspending the launch of new mutual funds, telling investors to be wary of entering the stockmarket at this stage, and ordering banks to ensure that commercial loans are not used for punting on stocks.

India’s responses have been much meeker, says a commercial banker in Mumbai. “There is a view now in Delhi that the focus should be on allowing people and companies to make money and drive growth,” he says. “People think that will solve all economic problems and consumer issues aren’t really on the table.” Of course, the Congress Party could pay a price for that in the coming elections, and to avoid that, it might come up with some populist measures. “But the core issue, the basic way policy is being formulated, will not change,” says the banker.

The Chinese professor says it is not fair to blame India’s political economy alone for the differences in the way China is managing its inflation. The Chinese government, he says, has the advantage of being in direct control of a much larger part of its national economy. “Here, the government, central bank, commercial banks and state-owned enterprises (which collectively account for 60 per cent of the economy) can move in step,” he says. “In India, policy is less efficient. It is already a high-cost economy. High inflation will make India economically unattractive to investors.” Then he chuckles. China’s amusement with India’s monetary policy appears to be spreading.

I just read the first para and looks like its a sincere one with usefull info in it. Just give me sometime to go thru it and then i will reply to it.

 

[Cheetah786]

Source of the article please,When did the double of 2.5 become 6.5...guess the author is pretty bad in mathematics. Anyways he is wrong about his figures.

India's inflation is 4.4% with a growth rate of nearly 10%. While Pakistan has a growth rate of 6.5% with an inflation of 8.4%.
As a person who did his thesis on chinese banking structure. I am not all awed at the claims put forth by them. Chinese havent even taken care of their growing NPA's, Chinese bubble will burst pretty soon. The sheer number of bad loans and bad credit policy is mind-boggling. They love the accounting policy, showing losses in future years and writing off bad loans faster than i can say "chewbacka"

http://www.businessworld.in/content/view/600/651/

indias inlation is 4% told ya stop drinking that cheap liquor.
indias growth rate is 9% not 10.pakistan is growing at 7% not 6.5


What's bizarre in Indian finance

When thinking about India's financial system, the ultimate focus should always be on market efficiency. The efficient market is the idealised state where prices incorporate information (and nothing but information). All financial products trade at their "fair" prices in the ideal efficient market, reflecting the tradeoff between risk and return. In the efficient market, well-diversified high risk portfolios earn greater average return than well-diversified low risk portfolios.

The five most egregious violations of market efficiency in India require no sophisticated analysis to detect. They are gross violations of any sane notion of the relationship between risk and return.

The interest rate on savings bank accounts versus the interest rate on government bonds. Normally, we would think that banks are riskier than the Government of India. The greater risk of banks should lead to a credit risk premium, whereby the interest rate that a bank has to pay is higher than the interest rate that the Government has to pay. But in India, it's upside down.

The interest rate on savings bank accounts versus the bonds that ICICI or IDBI issue. The rates of return which IDBI or ICICI have had to offer, in persuading people to buy their bonds, are remarkable. A back-of-the-envelope calculation reveals that if Bank of Maharashtra can borrow at 2%, and IDBI has to borrow at 12%, then the implied default probability of IDBI is around 9% if we assume that the insolvency probability of Bank of Maharashtra is zero. The implied default probability of IDBI would be higher if we assume reasonable values for the insolvency probability of Bank of Maharashtra.

Collateralised lending versus risky lending. Anywhere in the world, the interest rate in borrowing would have to be higher when there is less collateral. An adequately collateralised loan would have nearly-sovereign interest rates, and a loan with zero collateral would have to suffer the full credit risk premium for the borrower. In India, the call money market (and the inter-bank term money market) are based on zero collateral. The repo market is much safer since there is significant collateral. Yet, interest rates on the repo market are generally higher.

The variation in savings bank rate for weaker banks. A variety of statistics about bank vulnerability are widely known. The identities of the weakest 25 scheduled commercial banks in India are well known, and I expect that most of these will go into insolvency in the years to come. We would normally expect a credit risk premium associated with this: depositors should demand a higher interest rate when lending to a weaker bank. In India, this doesn't seem to happen. The weakest of banks offer interest rates much like the strongest banks, and even enjoy deposit growth while doing this.

The 12% number. Some financial products, e.g. the tax-saving scheme called PPF, offer a fixed 12% interest rate. This 12% is fixed in nominal terms. When the Government borrows at 12% (tax-free) on PPF, it is effectively paying 17% or so for those funds. At the same time, the Government is borrowing at much lower interest rates in primary issuance of government securities. This 12% number is fixed, whether interest rates or inflation changes. Indeed, we have seen this number fixed at 12% with inflation ranging from 3% to 12%, which implies a fluctuating real rate of return between 0% to 9%. Right now, with inflation near 3%, PPF is a 9% real rate of return: this is higher than even the equity rate of return of many countries. The grip of the 12% riskless nominal rate of return on India's financial system is nothing less than bizarre.

A central goal of a well functioning system of financial markets is to price risk appropriately, where activities which face greater risk are forced to pay a higher rate of return. The above examples are gross violations of this principle. If a space alien visited India, these would be the first "market inefficiencies" that he would notice. What is particularly striking about these inefficiencies is their importance in the economy. These inefficiences are not some obscure anomalies that some scholar has spent years in uncovering and documenting.

Each of these inefficiencies has its own "reasons" for existence. It is myopically efficient for many market participants to continue working with products and interest rates that they see around them. Yet, if we think about the economy as a whole, these five anomalies are the simple litmus tests of the sanity of India's financial system. Rapidly eliminating these anomalies should be an important goal in policy formulation.

To some extent, the seeds of change are already at hand. The rise of gilt funds and money market mutual funds is already presenting headaches for banks trying to charge inferior interest rates. Money market mutual funds are well placed to exploit the decline of banking, since they combine (a) access to the retail payments system (checks and ATMs), (b) higher rates of return as compared with banks, and (c) they are free of the concerns about bank insolvency, since the fiction of promising to return the deposit at a fixed and pre-determined interest rate is absent. Banking is criticised as a 19th century technology. MMMFs are the superior 20th century implementation of the same product.

If the RBI sets about building a well-designed `retail market for government securities', it could decisively shift interest rates on government paper to below the interest rates paid by banks.

The market design of India's fixed income market is riddled with mistakes. Yet, through a quirk of history, this is not a bottleneck for the corporate bond market. Corporate bonds trade on NSE's "Capital Market" segment, which is where equities trade. Hence, all the successful features of market design on the equity market are available when trading corporate bonds, except for one critical feature (depository settlement).

ICICI has commenced on a program of posting `limit orders' for its own bonds on the NSE, so that ICICI will always be there to buy or sell its own bonds on the NSE screen. When corporate bonds become fully dematerialised, it will become as painless to buy or sell corporate bonds as it is with the largest 104 equities in India (which are presently 100% in demat mode). Households who realise that buying and selling corporate bonds on any of the 2,200 NSE terminals is painless are likely to leave less money in savings bank accounts.

Deliberations on pension reform have already focused on moving away from the present structures of the PPF and EPFO, and should be accompanied by a complete elimination of the 12% number from all government products.

In summary, the five bizarre features of India's financial system listed above serve as a valuable and simple litmus test of the sanity of the risk/reward relationship that prevails. We don't need powerful financial econometrics to detect these failures of market efficiency. The elimination of each of these anomalies serves as a milestone for financial sector reforms.

http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah/MEDIA/1999/whatsbizarre.html

what i read about indian banking system makes me wanna go

 

[Adux]

Cheetah please dont embrass yourself it is an article from 1999, Please for god sake's you know i have a great deal of respect for you, but you ruining it my friend
Indian Inflation is 4.4%, with current bank rate at 13%, last months inflation is 4.7%,
Chinese Banking and their NPA's is my Dissertation for my Masters degree.

It's India Above China in New World Order
Q&A with: Tarun Khanna
Published: July 28, 2003
Author: Martha Lagace

Executive Summary:
Can India overtake China? That's the title of an influential new article in Foreign Policy magazine. A Q&A with authors Yasheng Huang of MIT and Tarun Khanna of HBS.

<p>Can India overtake China? That's the title of an influential new article in Foreign Policy magazine. A Q&amp;A with authors <strong>Yasheng Huang</strong> of MIT and <strong>Tarun Khanna</strong> of HBS.</p>





About Faculty in this Article:


Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

More Working Knowledge from Tarun Khanna
Tarun Khanna - Faculty Research Page
Comparing India and China is to embark on an old puzzle that has fascinated smart people for centuries. The newer question of economic leadership, however&#8212;"Which country will overtake the other in the foreseeable future?" &#8212;is an urgent and important one, according to a provocative article in the July-August issue of Foreign Policy magazine.

It is urgent and important because China and India are the world's next major powers, according to the writers, Yasheng Huang, formerly of Harvard Business School and now a professor at M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, and Tarun Khanna, a professor of strategy at HBS. It is also important because the two countries have embraced very different models of development.

The biggest source of worry is the state of China's banking sector, which is technically insolvent.
&#8212;Yasheng Huang and Tarun KhannaThe reasons they have done so are complex but, in general, China has discouraged or actively undermined local entrepreneurship in favor of an foreign direct investment-dependent approach, they say. India, on the other hand, is building an infrastructure&#8212;however slowly&#8212;that allows entrepreneurship and free enterprise to thrive. By making fuller use of its resources, India's long-term outlook may be far stronger, they suggest. Macroeconomic statistics cited by Huang and Khanna show China clearly in the lead. "But," the authors wonder in Foreign Policy, "the real issue isn't where China and India are today, but where they will be tomorrow."

How these two models play out has great significance not just for Asia but also for other parts of the world that want to benefit from their lessons and avoid their mistakes.

Huang and Khanna recently collaborated on an e-mail interview with HBS Working Knowledge to discuss their Foreign Policy article, "Can India Overtake China?"

Lagace: "China and India are the world's next major powers," you both write. "They also offer competing models of development." What are the most important differences you see in the ways China and India are evolving?

Yasheng Huang and Tarun Khanna: In terms of similarities, both are conscious of their role in the world economy. Both seek to play a bigger political role on the world stage. China is already doing that as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. The differences include the fact that China is taking tangible but slow steps towards embracing private entrepreneurship, a big departure from the past. India is continuing to struggle with making things easier for multinationals. So the differences are arguably narrowing; but our view is that the first-order effect of all this is still "a big difference."

Q: As you think about the future of both countries, what are your main concerns or worries, given these two different models?

A: Our concerns for China are these: how will China give political voice to the public, if at all, along with increasing economic autonomy? We are also concerned about instability caused by migration to cities and the large (though decreasing) role of bankrupt, state-owned enterprises that continue to play a Social Security-like role in China. But the biggest source of worry is the state of China's banking sector, which is technically insolvent. The banking problem is one of the biggest costs of the delay associated with developing a vibrant, domestic private sector.

Here are our concerns for India. How will India rein in its fiscal deficit? How will India discipline its political class? One challenge India faces is deregulation. India is also quite over-regulated compared to other countries at its level of per capita income.

Q: How does foreign direct investment affect the economic outlook for both countries?

A: In general, FDI has been positive to both economies. It has, after all, provided goods and services that did not otherwise exist. It has also introduced competition into moribund sectors. We do not buy the old, inward-looking economic ideology of the 1960s and 1970s that advocated protecting domestic markets. For China, however, the government liberalized its external sector way ahead of its internal sector. The government should speed up its reforms in the internal sector rather than scale back external sector reforms.

Q: On the influence of &#233;migr&#233;s, you write, "With the help of its diaspora, China has won the race to be the world's factory. With the help of its diaspora, India could become the world's technology lab." Tell us briefly how and why you believe Chinese and Indian &#233;migr&#233;s have come to perpetuate such different roles. Do you see these roles changing?

A: The different composition of the Chinese and Indian diasporas has to do with the different time periods during which each diaspora settled overseas and the different circumstances under which it did so. The Indian diaspora consists more of professionals; the Chinese consists more of entrepreneurs outside China. The implications of the differential structure of the diasporas is only now being appreciated, at least in the commercial arena. India has been particularly unreceptive&#8212;except until very recently&#8212;to embracing the diaspora.

Q: How is your message about the pace of India and China being received by economists, policy specialists, or business people?

A: We think they see it as a new and intriguing way to look at a centuries-old comparison. The best endorsement for our article is the way in which it has been disseminated. In India, it has spread by word of mouth and been reprinted in numerous newspapers and magazines. In China, one is hard pressed to find public discussion of the article; though the message is being discussed, we've been told, in other, less transparent forums. This is, in some sense, part of the very point of the article!

Q: How will you continue to delve into this area of research? What's next for you?

A: We are writing a book on China and India, eventually. We hope to use this to jump-start further research.

About the author
Yasheng Huang is an associate professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author most recently of Selling China: Foreign Direct Investment during the Reform Era (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/3604.html

 

[niaz]

For the benefit of the fellow members; I am posting an article written by the former Chief Justice of Pakistan Sajjad Ali Shah. It was during his tenure that Supreme court was attacked by Nawaz Sharif supporters. His departure was engineered thru efforts of an ex Justice Rafiq Tarar and the next senior most judge Saeed uzzaman Siddiqui. RafiqTarar became President and Saeed uzzaman the Chief Justice of Supreme Court in the aftermath.

The article outlines the first seven amendments carried out by ZAB. It is a piece of Pakistan's history which people should be aware of.


Judiciary & constitutional control




By Sajjad Ali Shah


AFTER the repeal of two constitutions and successive martial laws, East Pakistan separated and the remaining four provinces in West Pakistan agreed to live together under the Federation of Pakistan with maximum provincial autonomy.

Consequently, the Constitution of 1973 was framed by the elected members of the National Assembly prohibiting martial law with the division of powers among the three pillars of state: the executive, legislature and the judiciary.

The Constitution requires that there shall be a Supreme Court of Pakistan, a high court for each province and such other courts as may be established by law and no court shall have any jurisdiction save as is or may be conferred on it by the Constitution or by or under any law.

The procedure is prescribed in the Constitution for the appointment and removal of judges of the superior courts. The government of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto increased the salaries of the judges and perks including cars, houses, petrol and other civic amenities. The terms and conditions of service, including pension and other matters, are detailed in the fifth schedule of the Constitution.

Mr Bhutto was a barrister and a seasoned politician. He included in his cabinet lawyers and technocrats. He handled the judiciary with due care and caution and always tried to control it through the Constitution. During his five-year rule, Prime Minister Bhutto made seven amendments to the Constitution. The first amendment was made in 1974 modifying 17 articles relating to the judiciary, mostly curtailing powers, and including the transfer of judges from one high court to another. Article 199 was amended to exempt members of the armed forces from the purview of writ jurisdiction.

This was a great concession giving them protection from the scrutiny of the courts. The Second Amendment was made in the same year declaring the Qadianis as non-Muslims. By the Third Amendment in 1975, the period of preventive detention was increased from one to three months.

The Fourth Amendment was made in 1975 touching on several articles relating to the judiciary and stopping high courts from granting bail under their writ jurisdiction in preventive detention cases, and limited stay by a high court to six months in fiscal cases involving the revenue of the government.

The judiciary was to be separated from the executive at the magisterial level, and by the Fifth Amendment in 1976 the time for it was extended from three to five years. The demand was that magistrates be brought under the control of the high courts instead of the provincial government. Ultimately, after court intervention, the magistracy was bifurcated into judicial magistrates and executive magistrates under the control of the high courts and the provincial government respectively.

Additionally, the Fifth Amendment circumscribed the independence of the judiciary resulting in a hue and cry in legal circles. The then Chief Justice of Pakistan wrote a letter to the federal law minister complaining that some young Chief Justices of the high courts were unwilling to be elevated to the Supreme Court as judges and were recommending the names of those judges who were about to retire.

As provided for in the Constitution, a judge of the high court retires at the age of 62 years and in the case of the Supreme Court the retirement age is 65 years, hence there was an incentive of extension in service for three years. Young Chief Justices in the high courts did not want to give up the privileges, dignity and administrative control of the subordinate judiciary of the province.

Under these circumstances, induction in the Supreme Court was declined by the Chief Justices and accepted by retiring judges of the high courts, which was not fair to the Supreme Court. Acting on the Supreme Court Chief Justices&#8217; letter, the government provided remedy in the Fifth Amendment and gave fixed tenures of five years and four years to the Chief Justices of the Supreme Court and high courts respectively. After the expiry of the tenure, if a Chief Justice still had time to serve, he had to step down and serve as the most senior judge or retire from service.

In consequence, two Chief Justices, Sardar Mohammed Iqbal of the Lahore High Court and G. Safdar Shah of the Peshawar High Court, stepped down and accepted retirement. In Lahore, the most senior judge, Moulvi Mushtaq, was not appointed Chief Justice. Feeling terribly disappointed and disillusioned, he proceeded on long leave and went away to London.

The Fifth Amendment also provided that for the appointment of an acting Chief Justice, another judge could be nominated, instead of the most senior one, and allowed the transfer of a judge from one high court to another for one year without his consent.The Sixth Amendment was made in 1976 providing that if a Chief Justice reached the age of superannuation before the expiry of a fixed tenure, he would be allowed to complete the tenure beyond the age barrier. The beneficiary of this amendment was Chief Justice of Pakistan Yakoob Ali Khan who reached the age of 65 during his fixed tenure but was allowed to continue. It was during this time that I was appointed registrar of the Supreme Court after having served in the federal ministry of law and parliamentary affairs since 1973. In that capacity, I watched these developments from close quarters.

Prime Minister Z.A. Bhutto went for early elections in March 1977 and allowed a common symbol to the opposition parties united under the banner of the PNA. The Pakistan People&#8217;s Party won the election of the National Assembly but the opposition alleged rigging and boycotted the provincial assemblies&#8217; polls. There was a law and order situation resulting in chaos and turbulence. Parleys were going on between the government and the opposition parties and in the meantime the Seventh Amendment was introduced in the Constitution to determine the validity of the election of the prime minister.

This was also not accepted by the opposition parties; hence this amendment could not be acted upon and became redundant. It is stated that both the government and the opposition had nearly agreed on some formula to resolve the crisis but General Ziaul Haq, the chief of army staff, intervened, suspended the Constitution and imposed martial law in the country on July 5, 1977, and Mr Bhutto was taken into protective custody.

Begum Nusrat Bhutto, wife of the deposed prime minister and chairperson of the Pakistan People&#8217;s Party, filed a constitutional petition in the Supreme Court against the imposition of martial law. The petition was being heard by a bench presided over by Chief Justice Yakoob Ali Khan. An application was filed with the prayer that Mr Bhutto and other detainees, who were in different jails, be brought to the Sihala Rest House in Rawalpindi, and kept there till the conclusion of the proceedings. This prayer was allowed but the martial law government was not too pleased.

The CMLA withdrew the Sixth Amendment and in consequence Yakoob Ali Khan stepped down and was replaced by Justice Anwarul Haq, who was administered oath as the Chief Justice of Pakistan. Justice Moulvi Mushtaq Hussain was recalled from long leave and appointed Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court and acting chief election commissioner.

A bench of five judges in the Lahore High Court, presided over by CJ Moulvi Mushtaq Hussain, tried Mr Bhutto for the murder of the father of Mr Ahmed Raza Kasuri and sentenced him to death.

An appeal was heard in the Supreme Court by a bench presided over by CJP Anwarul Haq but was dismissed by a split verdict of four to three. The death sentence was not reduced to life imprisonment and a review petition was dismissed. The rest is history.Strange are the ways of nature. My main purpose in writing this piece is to show how the judiciary was controlled and the powers of judges reduced or restricted by amendments in the Constitution which were not challenged in the courts. The merry-go-round of civil governments chased out by military rulers continues with support from politicians compromising for individual interest and other relevant quarters making genuine democracy an elusive prospect.

The writer is a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

http://www.dawn.com/2007/08/13/ed.htm#4