Pakistan: Judges Behaving Badly

How Pakistan's Supreme Court Is Undermining Democracy

A Foreign Affairs roundtable discussion on the causes of instability in Pakistan and what, if anything, can be done about them. On June 19, Pakistan's Supreme Court charged the country's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, with contempt, disqualifying him from being a member of parliament and consequently unseating him from power. Gilani's crime? He refused to revive a money laundering investigation against his boss, President Asif Ali Zardari, who technically enjoys immunity from prosecution while in office. According to the country's constitution, only the election commission and the parliament itself have such authority. By simple fact, then, the Pakistani judiciary just pulled off a coup. The timing was particularly suspicious. The Supreme Court's decision came on the heels of a bribery scandal that involved Arsalan Iftikhar, the son of the chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry. And because Iftikhar's accuser was Malik Riaz Hussain, a politically connected real estate tycoon with ties to the president, some have argued that the court sacked Gilani as revenge. Some in the Pakistani opposition have applauded the move, arguing that judicial intervention is the only way to deal with the corruption of Zardari and his party. In their view, the judges' soft coup was far less insidious than those led by generals in the past, which have invariably led to full-blown authoritarian rule. But as Pakistan heads into an election year, the aggressive move has left the state's democratic foundations weakened, its judiciary less credible, and its military more powerful. To be sure, the development serves as only another chapter in an ongoing saga. For years, the Supreme Court and the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP) have been at odds over the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), an amnesty law instituted in 2007 by Pakistan's then president, General Pervez Musharraf, as part of a U.S.-brokered power-sharing deal with Benazir Bhutto, who was the PPP's leader in exile. In return for the government's withdrawal of corruption charges against Bhutto and Zardari, her husband, the party agreed to support Musharraf's re-election bid in October 2007.

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