Missing persons
WHEN all else fails, the highest offices in the land need to answer problematic questions about the role state institutions may have played in violating citizens’ fundamental rights. It is this context that apparently led the Islamabad High Court to summon the caretaker prime minister on Feb 19 in the hearing of a petition regarding the whereabouts of missing Baloch students. While hearing the case on Tuesday, Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani expressed his displeasure at the state’s inability to recover missing persons. The attorney general had told the court that out of 50 missing people, 22 had been recovered while the others had yet to be traced. Justice Kayani observed that he was summoning the interim PM, but later the incoming chief executive could also be asked to appear in court.
It is hoped that the judiciary’s efforts to trace missing persons and end the deplorable practice of enforced disappearances bear fruit. However, it should be said that the state has more often than not stymied such efforts, and has, in fact, tarred protesters calling for the recovery of missing persons with calumny. The caretaker PM has in the past criticised the protesters, linking missing persons with terrorism and hostile intelligence agencies, while lambasting the judicial system for not prosecuting those allegedly involved in separatist militancy. So it would be interesting to see what the government has to tell the court about this sensitive subject. But the caretakers will soon be packing their bags, and the incoming dispensation will have to tell the nation what it intends to do about ending enforced disappearances. The fact that protesters had marched from Balochistan to Islamabad, receiving an unsavoury ‘welcome’ from the authorities, and had camped out in the capital for a month to highlight their plight speaks volumes about the issue. Officials can cruelly dismiss these protests as publicity stunts, but that does not alter the fact that people are disappearing in Pakistan, with no recourse to due process. The explanation that the judicial system is too feeble to prosecute alleged wrongdoers, and implying that ‘disappearing’ suspects is the only solution is unconvincing and an excuse for the law of the jungle to prevail. The disappearances must end and those accused of committing crimes must be brought before the courts, while the factors fuelling discontent in Balochistan need to be addressed.
Published in Dawn, February 14th, 2024
Hard to ‘move on’
THE caretaker prime minister recently asserted that the nation has “accepted” the election results and that we must, therefore, “move on”. With all due respect, this seems like an overly optimistic take on a terribly messy situation.
As is evident from the slew of petitions being filed against the results, very few seem interested in ‘moving on’. In fact, the results are so unacceptable to certain stakeholders that, in some instances, political rivals are setting aside their differences to challenge them as one.
Similarly, the PM’s dismissal of concerns over tampered results, based on the simplistic assertion that people “believe that rigging was committed because the mobile service was suspended and results were delayed by 36 hours”, is a fallacious framing of a highly serious matter. The rigging accusations have much more to do with the suspicious conduct of many returning officers, which the PM conveniently glossed over in his eagerness to prove critics wrong.
Whether or not he feels it to be his “moral duty”, the PM should not be defending the ECP and its decidedly poor management of the election exercise. Nor does it seem appropriate for him to be summarily dismissing the concerns over election rigging, especially when the complaints are being taken to election tribunals and courts.
It also seems irresponsible of him to blame political parties for “failing to enact effective legislation” as the reason why the polls became controversial, instead of letting them take the matter up with the ECP. It is also strange that Mr Kakar is still having trouble deciding what ‘free and fair’ means.
The night before the election, he told a foreign interviewer that he “could not guarantee” free and fair polls because the idea was “very subjective”. Now, he is insisting that the “process” was free and fair and that anyone who disagrees with this assessment is wrong.
Such unwarranted self-assurance and disregard for consequence would perhaps be more easily overlooked in a popularly elected leader secure in their office.
However, they seem more than a little jarring when coming from an individual entrusted with the office to do just one job. The nation will, indeed, move on in good time. The political system will work through its present challenges and evolve.
However, the people will not be gas-lit into accepting less than what they deserve. The ECP will be held accountable for its failure to organise a smooth transfer of power from one elected government to the next.
It is only its disastrous mismanagement of the election process that is to blame for the growing controversy over rigging, not the media, which simply fulfilled its responsibility by acting as a check on the counting process. The government should accept this simple fact and move on.
Published in Dawn, February 14th, 2024