Vital Concerns for the World: The Lawyers' Mutiny in Pakistan

Monday, May 28, 2007

The Lawyers' Mutiny in Pakistan

Ali Khan has an insightful note on the prospects for the lawyer mutiny in Pakistan. I hope he is right that they will prevail in the end. We'll see.

*May 18, 2007*
*Confronting a Soft Dictatorship* The Lawyers' Mutiny in Pakistan

By ALI KHAN

A lawyers' mutiny is making history in Pakistan.

The sight of a "strong and honest" Chief Justice leading the nation's
lawyers to oust a military ruler who seized power by removing a democratically elected government makes a fabulous story. The story is even more engaging because the national Parliament elected by the people is playing dead. And the two popular leaders (former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto) who could have led the masses in this urgency live happily in exile.

A senior Supreme Court advocate in Pakistan tells me that this is the first time in Pakistan's history that lawyers have dropped their conflicting political affiliations and forged an unprecedented professional unity to restore the rule of law.

The lawyers are protesting in the streets to mobilize a popular uprising against the President. They are making it difficult for the Parliament to grant another five years term to the President.

Pakistan's leading lawyers are seeking the annulment of the CJP's suspension. Soon after the suspension, there existed a small window of time in which the President himself could have undone the worst mistake of his rule. That option is no longer available. ... The annulment is most likely to occur, however, because the constitutional petitions are not about the hermeneutics of Article 209 but about a colossal struggle between two primary institutions of Pakistan, the Armed Forces and the Judiciary.

No comments:

A major source of the American debt problem

Notable Concerns

"Not one has taken responsibility for the biggest foreign policy disaster in U.S. history." Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condolezza Rica, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith.
The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. AlJazeera 10/15/11
GE, America's largest corporation, paid no taxes last year even though it made 5.1 billion dollars profit in the country [and even more outside the country] [source: same as below]
In 2009 the richest 5% held 63.5% of American wealth; the bottom 80% controlled 12.8%. [source: same as below]
Between 2000 and 2007 the richest 10% in America benefited from all of the average growth in the period. In the post WW II period the top 10% benefited from only one third of the growth, the bottom 90% benefiting from the rest of the growth. [Economic Policy Institute, cited by Bob Herbert, NYT 3/26/11]
In 2010 a "premier" investment bank paid each of its 26,000 employees an average of $370,000. [Bill Gross Pimco Investment Outlook Feb, 2011.]
In 2005, one-quarter of the corporations in America making a trillion dolars in revenue paid no taxes.
The 833% Medical Insurance Ripoff: Medicare charges 3% for service; the health insurance companies in Missouri charge 25% for services
The richest 1 percent of Americans have more net worth than the bottom 90 percent.
The richest 1 percent of Americans receive more income than the bottom 50%. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/dec/10/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-viral-speech-says-top-1$ >