General Parvez Musharaf

 

 General Parvez Musharaf

His week, a special court found former Pakistani ruler General Pervez Musharraf guilty of high treason under article 6 of Pakistan’s constitution — for suspending the constitution when he imposed a state of emergency in November 2007 — and sentenced him to death. Article 6 holds that a person who “abrogates or subverts or suspends or holds in abeyance” the country’s constitution has committed high treason. Musharraf can appeal the verdict in the Supreme Court.

Given that he is currently living in Dubai, the sentence is unlikely to be carried out, even if it is upheld by the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, this is an unprecedented verdict and an unprecedented ruling against a former army chief, and it serves as an unmistakable blow to Pakistan’s powerful military. It has ignited a legal and political firestorm in Pakistan.

The background

The verdict against Musharraf caps a six-year trial since he was first booked for high treason in court in December 2013, under a case moved by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s government. Sharif had signaled his intent to bring high treason charges against Musharraf in June 2013, right after he came into power.

Musharraf and Sharif have a singular history. In October 1999, Musharraf, then Sharif’s chosen chief of army staff, dissolved parliament and ousted Sharif in a bloodless coup. Musharraf declared himself president of Pakistan in 2001, and held general elections in 2002, after disqualifying Sharif and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto from running for office. That year, his newly formed Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid) — which many called a “King’s party,” created with the help of defectors from Sharif’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) — won control of parliament, cementing Musharraf’s hold on power.

Five years later, in 2007, his precipitous fall from power began when he clashed with Pakistan’s judiciary. In March of that year, he sacked the chief justice, leading to widespread lawyers’ protests. On November 3, 2007, he suspended the constitution, imposed a state of emergency, and placed dozens of senior judges under house arrest. He restored the constitution in December 2007. In 2009, the Supreme Court ruled that Musharraf’s decision to impose the emergency was illegal, and in 2013, Sharif’s government brought charges of high treason against him for imposing the 2007 emergency.

The six-year saga of the treason trial included Musharraf failing to appear in court dozens of times, postponement of the hearing date because of his illnesses, six reconstitutions of the special court, and multiple prosecution heads quitting or being fired by the government. Musharraf, who had been placed on a no-fly list, received a one-time permission to travel abroad on medical grounds in 2016. He has not returned to Pakistan since.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court issued an order to the special court overseeing the treason case that it could proceed with the trial and the verdict without Musharraf’s statement, given that he had refused to appear in court. This fall, Khan’s government tried to have the announcement of the verdict delayed; the court finally issued an initial verdict on December 17, with the detailed verdict released on December 19.

The detailed verdict, with one dissenting judge and two judges in favor, refers to the repeated delays in the trial, saying Musharraf had “persistently and stubbornly strived ever since the commencement of this trial, to delay, retract and in fact evade it.” One paragraph in the judgment, authored by Justice Waqar Seth, is particularly gruesome:

We direct the law enforcement agencies to strive their level best to apprehend the fugitive/convict and to ensure that the punishment is inflicted as per law and if found dead, his corpse be dragged to the D-Chowk, Islamabad, Pakistan [a large public square near Pakistan’s parliament, presidency, and Supreme Court] and be hanged for 03 days.

This paragraph — which will be nonbinding given that the second concurring judge, Justice Shahid Karim, has taken specific exception to it — has drawn widespread condemnation, even by those otherwise in agreement with the verdict.

Where Khan’s government stands

The position of current Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government is close to the military’s. In 2007, when Musharraf imposed the emergency, Khan, then a minor politician, had argued that Musharraf had in fact committed high treason by subverting the constitution. But now, Khan is beholden to the army for paving the way for him to become prime minister, and he will stand by the military as an institution. What is more, many former Musharraf loyalists are now members of his cabinet. This explains why Khan’s government tried to have the verdict delayed, and why his attorney general, in response to the initial verdict, characterized the trial as “void” and the verdict as “unfair” because it was conducted with Musharraf in absentia.

Fall from grace

The story of Musharraf’s fall is a remarkable one, especially for those in the West who remember him as the prominent face of Pakistan as an ally in the war on terror post-9/11. Musharraf was later revealed to be duplicitous in his dealings with the United States, but his ultimate fall from grace in Pakistan was due to a very different, entirely domestic issue. It is no coincidence that that fall began with a clash with the judiciary in 2007, and it was the judiciary again that landed a blow to him and his institution this week. In Pakistan, the hyphenated civil-military power struggle has now morphed into a civil-military-judiciary one. And it is this new military-judiciary clash that is the crucial one to watch for the future of Pakistan’s civilian institutions.