LAHORE: The Pakistani authorities have warned the defiant Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Nawaz Sharif to refrain from raising rebellious slogans or incite public feelings, for which the government has enough evidence that a case under clause 124-A of the Constitution could be initiated against him on the charges of sedition that could land him in jail for life.
The warning came from Pakistan’s controversial Adviser to Prime Minister on Interior Rehman Malik at a press conference in Islamabad on March 10. A visibly agitated Malik warned the Sharif brothers that they were openly trying to incite the masses against the government besides bringing into disrepute the august office of the President of Pakistan and therefore the law could take its due course if they do not stop using derogatory language against him and his boss. He said Nawaz Sharif had repeatedly given an open call for mutiny at public meetings — firstly by rejecting the recent Supreme Court verdict about his disqualification and defaming the superior court judges; secondly by openly asking his brother and former Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif to go back to the Punjab Assembly building and assume the charge of the government, thirdly by telling the local police not to obey the government’s orders and fourthly by stating that “I hereby raise the flag of mutiny against the government and urge upon you to join hands with me”. Malik then threatened the Sharif brothers that if someone dies in the long march scheduled for March 16, murder cases would be registered against those leaders who are inciting the masses to join the anti-government agitation.
Hardly a year after the 2008 general elections, Pakistan has been hit by a serious stand-off between the Pakistan People’s Party and the main opposition PML-N since the latter’s leaders Nawaz and Shahbaz were barred by the Supreme Court from contesting polls and holding elected office, allegedly under the influence of President Zardari. A couple of days before Rehman Malik’s press conference, the Pakistan People’s Party leadership announced an end to reconciliation talks with the PML-N, amidst Nawaz Sharif’s key associates expressing apprehensions that his life was threatened by the Pakistani president, who faces criticism from Sharif, especially after his party’s government in the largest province of Punjab was dismissed and governor’s rule was imposed. According to media reports, a senior politician who recently met Zardari told a select audience the president had shown him his tongue with scars and said he had not forgotten what was done to him in jail when Sharif was prime minister. Political circles believe any move against the Sharif brothers would lead to an escalation of the political crisis in Pakistan.
The warnings coming from President Zardari’s close aides against the opposition parties is a clear sign that the PPP leadership has finally run out of patience and was bent upon using the same old ploys which had been exercised against the political opponents of the Musharraf regime in the past and which had been furiously condemned by none other than the martyred chairperson of the PPP, Ms Benazir Bhutto. If the Zardari-led PPP government in Islamabad translates into reality its threat of filing sedition charges against Nawaz Sharif for trying to incite the masses against the government, he would not be the first leader of the Pakistan Muslim League to face a treason trial as Javed Hashmi was the first one to be tried and sentenced by the Musharraf regime under the century old infamous sedition law that was actually enacted by the British Raj to punish the freedom fighters of 1857 uprising for abetting mutiny.
Javed Hashmi was sentenced to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment on January 24, 2004, by a district and sessions judge of Rawalpindi, on charges of forging documents to incite mutiny and defame the Pakistan army. The defiant PML leader had in fact made public at a press conference in Islamabad on October 20, 2003 a petition written on a GHQ letterhead and sporting the monogram of the Pakistani army. The petition, written in Urdu, had been circulating among army officers. But Hashmi’s decision to make it public was construed as sedition by the Musharraf regime.
For, the petition, among other things, demanded that the army high command permit the parliament to debate the Kargil venture and determine the motives behind the misadventure and the causes of its failure. Addressed to the national leadership, the letter had described Musharraf and his cabal as national criminals and had stated, “We, on behalf of the Pakistan Army, assure the nation that it is your army—the army of Islam and Pakistan, and we expect every member of the parliament, from whichever party he belongs, to work for the sovereignty of the parliament”.
Hashmi was subsequently arrested on October 30, 2003 and sentenced to seven years imprisonment following an in-camera trial for treason under precisely those sections of the penal code that the British government had invoked against people like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Maulana Mohammad Ali Johar and Mahatma Gandhi. Hashmi was charged under sedition – Section 124-A of the Pakistan Penal Code, to be precise, which states: “Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards, the Federal or Provincial Government established by law shall be punished with imprisonment for life to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.”
As Javed Hashmi was arrested from his residence in the Parliament Lodges in Islamabad on October 30, 2003 by sleuths of the intelligence agencies in plain clothes and was husked away to some unknown location, Benazir Bhutto issued a hard hitting statement the same night, saying “The sedition charges being filed against Mr. Javed Hashmi are state fascism which is intended to silence the voice of the democratic opposition. The dictatorial Musharraf regime is making a grave miscalculation if it thought that such intimidation through sedition cases would deter the democratic forces from pursuing their struggle for a just and judicious democratic order”. However, the ruling leaders of the Bhutto’s party seem to have forgotten the thoughts and sayings of their martyred leader for all practical purposes.
To recall, Napoleon Bonapart once said that one should never interrupt one’s enemy when he is making a mistake. No one knows if President Asif Zardari has read Napoleon. However, the good thing about history is that it tends to repeat itself; the bad thing is that Pakistani politicians refuse to learn from history, especially when they are in power.
amir.mir1969@gmail.com