Editorial: How to impeach the president
The two mainstream parties of the ruling coalition in Islamabad — the PPP and the PMLN — have decided to consult their other two partners, the ANP and JUIF, before making a move to impeach and remove President Pervez Musharraf from his office. The “make-or-break” meeting between Mr Asif Ali Zardari and Mr Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday in Islamabad resulted in the decision to go ahead with impeachment under Article 47 of the Constitution. For the first time, the body language of the leaders indicated that the PMLN was satisfied with what it was getting out of the “summit” discussion.
The PPP has been complaining of “interference” from the Presidency for some time, though not with the same intensity as the PMLN in Punjab. The position may have changed a bit now because the PPP is also toying with the idea of having its own man in the presidency. The level of unhappiness or dissatisfaction was revealed by Mr Zardari during an interview with Business Plus TV channel aired the same day. He stated bluntly that the government of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani was finding the president an obstacle in governance. When pushed to be more specific, he said the government would like to replace the Chief Commissioner and Governor of the State Bank but was hampered in this by the president. Apparently, the president is also dragging his feet on Mr Zardari’s nominee for the ambassadorship of the UAE, a position currently held by a friend of the president who also served in the caretaker administration.
It develops that the Governor of the State Bank, Ms Shamshad Akhtar, may have offended the government by making public the sum which his government had borrowed from the State Bank against good sense as it notched up the deficit and stoked inflation. Mr Zardari said the most recent Rs 50 billion had to be borrowed because his government had to pay off the oil companies whose dues had not been cleared by the Musharraf government. Because of non-payment, the companies were unable to supply oil for the production of electricity and power producers were unable to pay the suppliers. He seemed unhappy that this economic measure of last resort was shown to the public as an “excess”by the State Bank governor.
On Wednesday, Dr Pervez Tahir, chief economist of the Planning Commission from 2000 to 2006, brought out the supposed bias of the Governor in blinking the much bigger borrowings by governments before the PPP coalition took over in 2008. He wrote: “In November-December 2007 alone, the State Bank allowed the government to borrow Rs178bn. And now it is becoming restless because the new government in its first month borrowed Rs33bn. The consequences of the failure to act in July 2007 are being projected as problems that the democratic alliance does not have the competence to deal with. The plot continues to thicken.”
In any case, presidential impeachment may be easier said than done. There is uncertainty in certain quarters about the impeachment in terms of numbers and procedure. While many lawyers are agreed that impeachment can go ahead, some point to the difficulties of preparing a charge sheet according to the Constitution which pins the parliament down to one or all of the following three presidential culpabilities: 1) unfitness to hold the office due to incapacity, 2) guilt of violating the Constitution, 3) gross misconduct. The partisans of this view hold that the President’s actions violating the Constitution in 1999 and 2007 through military rule were validated by the Supreme Court; therefore, the charge sheet will be seriously challenged.
The question of numbers has never been very clear. The PPP itself had earlier declared on a number of occasions that the coalition did not have the two-thirds vote required for impeachment in a joint parliamentary session. Also, the PMLQ and the MQM cannot be expected to support the move and their position will not change visibly in the interim. Of course, rumours have been afoot about the development of overt and covert “forward blocs” within the PMLQ, and that the PMLN has been quietly encouraging them. Therefore, if the PMLQ can be broken, and if the ANP and JUIF persuaded to go along, then the numbers may not be out of range. But these are two big ifs.
But there are other issues that are less clear. Does the PPP really want the quick exit of Mr Musharraf even if it leads to a stampede of the PMLQ into the arms of the PMLN and weakens the balance of power between the PMLN and PPP? How will the SC packed with Musharraf loyalists react to the impeachment when it knows that it will be on the hit list of the PMLN next? Will the president sit back and let the PPP-PMLN grab the MNAs and Senators or will he throw the ISI and MI into the game and thwart them by wooing the ANP and JUIF?
Let us be clear about how the forces are stacked at the moment before we jump to any conclusions. The PMLN and President Musharraf are true foes in the sense that they can’t share power under any circumstances. The PPP is in the middle, it wants the president to go but it doesn’t want the PMLN to gain advantage out of it, and thus far it has been trying to survive by balancing one off against the other. The ANP has its hands full in combating terrorism in its province and needs the army and ISI on its right side. The JUIF is looking over its shoulder to see which way the wind blows.
So we have the President, Army, ISI, MQM and PMLQ on one side, fully united, and the PMLN, the PPP, the lawyers’ movement and most Pakistanis on the other, with one critical qualification — the lawyers’ movement is fatigued and lacks the potency of last year, while “the people” are not ready to risk their necks for their anti-Musharraf beliefs. The Supreme Court, ANP and JUIF are seemingly in the middle but their short term interests are more likely to be tilted in favour of the former than the latter.
If President Musharraf cancels his China visit, it will mean he takes this threat seriously and is going to quickly rally his forces. If he shrugs and goes to China, it will mean he isn’t worried. *
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan
"and most Pakistanis on the other,"
I still have my doubts about this claim. Most people are realizing that the Musharraf impeachment is simply a distraction from the real issues that the current government is grossly incapable of dealing with.
Sir thats the question to ponder that does PPP has he numbers in parliament to send Musharraf home by deafeting him over vote of confidence ???
