A dangerous beat
One of the Pashto-speaking journalists has been eliminated in Karachi while others have been advised to leave city
By Rahimullah Yusufzai
The small number of Pashtun journalists working in Karachi have been living in fear after the authorities warned some of them to curtail their activities due to threats to their lives in the wake of Wali Khan Babar’s assassination.

Economic justice
Courts involvement in economic matters has once again triggered a debate over judicial activism versus judicial restraint
By Shahzada Irfan Ahmed
The recent orders by the Supreme Court for removal of former National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) president Ali Raza and the return of mobilisation advances to the government by the RPPs (Rental Power Projects) have once again triggered the debate over judicial activism versus judicial restraint.

A famous Persian verse, “When death comes, he has smile on his lips” (Chon marg ayad tabbasum bar lab-e-oo ast) has always taken my fancy. I have a strong belief that death is the biggest test for any philosopher or leader: If he has the courage to stare at death in the eyes and is ready to sacrifice life for his ideals, he is definitely a great man; otherwise he has no place in history.

Pakistani politics has a unique place in the world where two members of a family, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his daughter Benazir Bhutto, were faced with a choice -- to stand up for their ideals and embrace death or compromise on them. Both of them willingly chose death.

Salmaan Taseer falls in the same category of leadership. Had he not decided to stand up for a cause that was dear to him, he would still have been alive, enjoying the protocol of a colonial governor. I know it for a fact that Salmaan Taseer knew his fate. I tried to warn him against getting involved in what I thought was a sensitive issue. After having listened to my long sermon, he rendered me speechless by saying: “I know I am taking a stand for a poor innocent Christian girl. If someone wants to kill me for this, I am ready to die.”

I tried to disagree but decided to keep quiet when he said, “I have taken a conscious decision. There is no way I will backtrack.”

It was Christmas, just a week before his untimely demise. I had the opportunity to spend about six hours with Taseer at his farmhouse in Lahore. It was an informal get-together. Since we were four people, he drove the jeep himself with me sitting on the front seat while his confidant Chaudhry Fawad and Raja Amir Khan, a PPP leader from Sialkot, perched on the back seat.

He was as usual jovial and candid. He wanted to share the joy of successfully defeating a media campaign against him. He narrated how he befooled the television channels by feeding them wrong information of having left the country. With a naughty boy’s smile on his face, he told us how President Zardari got perturbed when the first ticker was shown, but he assured him of turning the tables on the media. And he did it that day.

On way to his farmhouse, there were just two security vans escorting the jeep. When I pointed out the rather lax security in such a sensitive situation, he shrugged his shoulders casually. In fact, he was generally quite carefree about his security and would often ignore security threats with a big smile on his face.

His farmhouse, only a few miles from Lahore, is totally cut off from the boisterous humdrum city life. Tall and shady trees, chirping birds and strolling ostriches, hens and peacocks make it a heavenly abode. Taseer was thoroughly urban, born and brought up in the city, but somehow he found solace and comfort in the rural atmosphere. He proudly told us he was an agriculturist now. He showed us every inch of his farmhouse, briefed us about the different crops while walking on the muddy and uneven ways in between the grassy and wet fields.

“I built this farmhouse for relaxation but it has become a profitable concern because of PPP’s good agricultural policies,” he said. He informed that Pakistan, this year, has become the biggest rice exporter of the world. He further asserted that cotton, wheat and other crops also have been very good so farmers have bought the biggest number of bikes this year.

Like every great man he was full of contradictions -- an urbanite who loved rural life, an elitist having a heart for the poor and the downtrodden, a man full of zest for life and yet desiring a place in history even at the cost of his life.

He was perhaps the only well-established chartered accountant who was tortured in the Lahore Fort during the Zia regime. Later, he was brutally beaten up in a police station for being too loyal to PPP. But he never bowed to his adversaries.

Salmaan Taseer spelt innovation with every move of his: be it his business or politics. I asked him why didn’t he establish any industry though every rich man has done so? He answered frankly that he had always believed in innovation. He told me how he introduced the cable network technology in Pakistan when no one knew about it. “I came into the phone business when it was new, enjoyed its boom and then left it for those venturing into it.”

The governor ordered his cook at the farmhouse to prepare organic chicken (desi kukar in his own words) and a dish of turnips. After a hearty lunch, we again decided to take a walk around the farmhouse peppered with a light chat and returned for more gossip over tea.

Politics was the subject closest to his heart. Of late, he had started appreciating Nawaz Sharif for his better conduct in politics. He was quite critical of Shahbaz Sharif, his policies and even his attitude. He narrated an incident when his daughter travelled with Nawaz Sharif and his wife in the same plane. Begum Kulsoom recognised her. In Taseer’s words, Nawaz Sharif told his daughter that politics apart, she was like their own daughter. The Sharif family took care of his daughter throughout the journey.

He complained that Shahbaz Sharif acted contrary to his elder brother’s conduct on the oath-taking ceremony of the new chief justice. While he stopped to pay regards to the wives of Justice Ijaz Chaudhary and Justice Khwaja Sharif, he wilfully ignored the governor’s wife. “It is no politics,” he lamented. I tried to argue that Mian Shahbaz Sharif might not have seen his wife. He did not buy my view and said, “My wife very well saw what the CM was up to.”

He was always optimistic about the future of Pakistan; his only concern was the bad shape of the country’s economy. That day, he was particularly unhappy about the Ministry of Finance and its slow pace in taking vital decisions. He understood economy like the back of his hand and would have contributed a lot had he been a finance minister of this badly-managed country.

From serious topics, we would switch to the mundane and had a good share of laughter during that last meeting with Salmaan Taseer. He talked about a businessman friend having an affair with a beautiful lady. Having invested a lot on the lady, his friend came to know she was also having an affair with a top politician. Salmaan Taseer was sad for his friend when I interjected and said loving a disloyal woman had a charm of its own. My argument was that if you love a loyal lady, the challenge ends too soon; otherwise the adventure is prolonged and you keep putting your best forward in order to win her over. He thoroughly enjoyed my logic and got so excited that he asked to borrow the phrase “Bewafa se Ishq ka maza hi kuch aur hai) which I happily surrendered.

He would always draw clear lines between his friends and foes. More recently, Rahman Malik was quite close to him while he was not happy with Babar Awan. If there was ever a match for the party secretary generalship, he would have sided with his old rival Jahangir Badar instead of his new foe Babar Awan.

I could not resist asking him about his biggest political debacle, when he failed to stop the Long March for the restoration of judiciary. He became serious and his tone became emotional: “Let people say whatever they want to but I am happy that not a single drop of blood was wasted. Stopping the Long March by force was no problem but it was not my option. Actually it was the army which did not allow a change in Punjab. How could you stop the Long March when one top police official was assuring the Sharifs of his loyalty? I have a recording of that conversation with me.”

He had been a leftist in his youth; he still was. He was unhappy with the Americans for creating a silly phrase “Af-Pak”. “Can Afghanistan and Pakistan be equated; one is a democracy with an educated middleclass while the other is still a tribal society full of warlords. I cannot digest when I see Obama flanked by Asif Zardari and Karzai on his both sides. This is an insult to my country,” he remarked. “I am going to blast Americans on this issue.”

I think Salmaan Taseer was getting bored being a governor. He once jokingly said, “My cousin Yusaf Salli (Salahuddin) had been creating an aura around the office of the governor by mentioning his elder Mian Amin ud Din’s time when he was constitutional head of the province.” Salmaan Taseer smilingly said, “When I checked out, Mian Amin ud Din had been governor for a period of few months only, which I surpassed many months back.”

Clearly, he did not think much of the governor’s office. Truth is that if he had retired as a governor, history would have remembered him as a minor character. But the way Salmaan Taseer embraced his coffin, he has made it impossible for the historians to ignore his life and death.

It is extremely difficult to write about an ongoing event such as the Tunisian uprising (now called a revolution) since struggles of these kind tear asunder the certainties of the past and split open a future pregnant with several possibilities. While it goes without saying that with the departure of Ben Ali, Tunisia today is a tug of war where several social forces will contend for hegemony, what the Tunisian people have achieved thus far in the face of formidable hurdles is nothing short of ground-breaking.

One cannot help but believe that the Arab world will not be the same after this momentous event and both corrupt Arab dictatorships as well as the United States will be bracing themselves for a long year of discontent, especially if the recent changes in Lebanon and the massive protests in Egypt are anything to go by.

However, what the protests also signify in my opinion is an attempt at a rebirth of the politics of Arab unity, democracy and social welfare, after a long interregnum based on the politics of Islamism, and therefore the message they send has a resonance far beyond the boundaries of the Middle East. I say attempt, since it may be an over-generalisation to suspend the uniqueness of the Tunisian experience under the banners of ‘Arab’ or ‘Islamic’, a practice all too frequent in the past.

With the end of the cold war and the unraveling of third world anti-colonial nationalism many had spelt the death of a politics based on socio-economic equality and welfare. At the same time it was held that what now existed in the world were cultural orders encapsulated by Samuel Huntington’s influential book ‘The Clash of Civilizations’. All of a sudden the ‘Arab world’ transformed overnight into the ‘Muslim World’ and equally briskly into the ‘Islamic World’ as though no diversity existed within these different countries.

The ones benefitting the most out of such proclamations were the Islamist groups who latched on to the bandwagon of ‘civilizational clash’ as if to prove that issues such as democracy, economic equality and freedom had all either been bypassed or if they existed, the solution lay in their version of Islam. Therefore, the dichotomy that seemed to exist in most Arab countries (perhaps even beyond Arab countries) was between ‘secular’ authoritarian dictatorships backed by Washington on the one hand and reactionary political Islamism of various shades, with these two groups monopolising the political stage.

This was all the more ironic since it was happening in the midst of immense global economic restructuring through the implementation of neoliberal policies in the developing world resulting in poverty and unemployment; it seemed that the politics of the time, based on culturalisms of all kinds, were out of tune with the economic realities of their people.

When Mohammed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old unemployed Tunisian graduate in the central town of Sidi Bouzid, set himself on fire in an attempt to commit suicide and the people took to the streets, the central issues of economic and political equality were brought squarely back on the table in society where unemployment runs as high as 30 percent. What was remarkable about the struggle that ensued was that it was not led by the main Islamist party Al-Nahda but by secular intellectuals, unemployed youth, university students, doctors, lawyers and most importantly, trade unionists. The fact that the struggle was not initiated by the Islamists has forced them to seek an uneasy alliance with secular, progressive and even communist bedfellows. However, as reported by several blogs and reporters from Tunis, the realisation that this is not the most durable of alliances is present among the supporters of the movement.

The experience of Iran over thirty years ago, where a broad democratic movement against the despotic rule of the Shah was transformed into a theocratic regime, still remains fresh in the minds of those taking to the streets in Tunis and elsewhere in the country. This is signified by the conscious attempt made by the protestors to keep the content of their programme as well as the slogans of the movement focused on issues of democracy, freedom, socio-economic and even gender equality so as to not play into the hands of the Islamists.

Of course it is too early to be certain, but if the events of the recent past and present are of any significance (which I believe they are), we may well see a progressive democratic alternative to both Western backed authoritarian dictatorships as well as reactionary political Islam that have dominated the political landscape of the Arab countries for too long. This is the kind of alternative that seemed impossible in Latin America twenty years ago but is the reality of most of the continent today. Could it be that the uprising in Tunisia is the harbinger of an alternative for other Arab countries? Only time will tell.

India seems to be a nation constantly struggling to come up to the expectations and perceptions created, and perpetually modified, by its mammoth film industry.

In a country where millions squat along rail and road ways to relieve themselves every morning, and another few millions keep jumping in the air all day to avoid stepping on human excrement … and to reach, and cross, the ever elusive poverty line hanging above them, the local cinema routinely dishes out stories of affluence, romance, and all things pretty.

Contemporary filmmakers must have scouted all of India and failed to find a single location conducive for shooting a flick that portrays India as it is not. So they decided every film has to be shot abroad. Even a B class film producer can find the money to shoot a couple of songs in Dubai, for a story that is set in Dwarka. The more resourceful producer goes for the full monty and sets the entire story in a foreign land where the Indian hero or heroin or both, break into a song and dance routine in public places, much to the amusement of local crowds, if not for the cinema goer back home.

‘Kites’ is one such film dubbed ‘the most awaited film of 2010’ by an Indian media that keeps redefining the term ‘hype’. This flick is not only shot in Los Vegas, its heroin speaks only Spanish and still manages to captivate a Hindi and English speaking hero with a little help from expat Indians who show up at the right moments to translate one for the other.

The film starts with the usual disclaimer: ‘All characters and incidents are imaginary …’ and ends with the feeling the viewer has been cheated. That the characters are so lame and incidents so unconnected, that it is hard to believe someone imagined this gibberish.

I bought a good pirated DVD of the film for Rs200 -- double the price of a not-so-good pirated copy. But the sound is still bad and subtitles are no help either, as they are in Hindi. Watching the movie in Pakistan thus becomes 130 minutes of creative guessing exercise.

The opening sequence is set in a strange place, where people speak in a strange language, and their words are translated on screen in another strange language. While the viewer is grappling with all the strangeness, the story goes back three months, returns to present, then goes back … until one loses all bearing of time and space, and of course blames oneself for not paying enough attention. That is the only clever bit in the plot.

But frankly, this film can’t be explained in terms of its plot. Because there isn’t one. There are at least four. As if four writers shut themselves up in different rooms and penned their story, independent of others. Then the director comes in, picks up the four scripts, shoots them, and puts them together in no particular order.

The first writer was making an action thriller. Bike stunts, hot-air balloons, trains, bank robbery, even a Western-style shootout between police and bandits wearing cowboy hats. And oh did I mention car chases? Every time someone steps out, a car chase begins, and doesn’t end until a few dozen vehicles have been destroyed.

The second writer wanted a romance. Hot, steaming, three-way romance. And his is the only plot that runs through the film, though it’s difficult to stay with it in the blur created by the frequent action sequences. This writer’s capacity to create a love saga is restrained only by his initial choice of making the romance inter-racial, where the couple doesn’t understand each other’s language. And by an out-of-his-depth Hirithik Roshan (Jay) who is especially woody during intimate scenes.

Where our hero failed the second writer, the heroin Barbara Mori (Linda) supported the third writer all she could in making an erotic film. This guy did not write for quantity. He likes to do little but stay focused -- in this case on breasts. Linda dresses, stoops, and moves, just to afford the camera sultry angles into her cleavage as demanded in the script. There’s even a close-up of Hirithik’s nipple! And we are told some racy scenes have been left out of the Indian version, to be included in the international one coming out this year. Will it be X-rated?

The saddest loser of all the writers is the fourth one who wanted a comedy. He gets his way for all of ten seconds during a car chase when Jay is required to get some laughter by being silly. Viewers can’t be blamed for missing the cue to laugh because Jay is silly in action, romance and pretty much everything else too.

It is considered the strongest lair of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Bhutto loyalists in Karachi, but the elected representatives of the ruling party remain among the most unpopular individuals here. Graffiti on the walls ridicule and insult PPP lawmakers elected in the 2008 general elections from Lyari -- one of the earliest and most backward neighbourhoods of Karachi -- where old and new tricolour PPP flags dot the electricity poles, rickety old houses and buildings.

At many places, along with posters and huge pictures of slain family members of the Bhutto dynasty and President Asif Ali Zardari, photographs of a notorious gangster of his time, Sardar Abdul Rehman, alias Dakait also adorn the neighbourhood -- underlining the emergence of a new political phenomenon in this PPP stronghold.

Yes, the name and legend of Rehman Dakait, killed in a controversial police encounter in August 2009, continue to live in Lyari. Dakait’s ambitions to join politics from the PPP platform ended with his death, but his People’s Amn Committee (PAC) emerged as a force to reckon with in Lyari -- a PPP stronghold since 1970s. Disgruntled supporters and workers of the PPP, gangsters and criminals comprise the core of the Amn Committee, which takes pride in doing social and welfare work. For the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and even some PPP stalwarts, the Amn Committee symbolises criminalisation of politics, while its supporters say that it represents the voice of ordinary people and party workers ignored and forgotten by the leadership.

But between these two extreme points of view, the hard fact is that the Amn Committee has effectively managed to establish its grip over Lyari at the cost of PPP’s organisational structure. The PPP member National Assembly from the area Nabeel Gabol avoids his constituency because of what he believes a threat to his life. Gabol has been staying away from Lyari for months now -- even before he provoked the recent wrath of President Zardari by what the party insiders say his “ill-timed” and “thoughtless” statement about the two PPP allies the Awami National Party (ANP) and the MQM -- which nearly cost him his ministry.

The two PPP MPAs from the area -- Muhammad Saleem Hingoro and Muhammad Rafiq Engineer -- are taunted and badmouthed by a vast number of people in Lyari and have restricted movements in their respective constituencies, where the Amn Committee now wields power.

“It is not that there is no PPP structure in Lyari,” says a senior PPP leader and lawmaker from Karachi requesting anonymity. “From the ward to the district level, there are office-bearers and the party structure, but it is dormant. After coming to power, the leadership failed to come up to the expectation of people. They have been hiding from the people and their demands. The vacuum has been filled by the People’s Amn Committee. Those PPP workers have joined the committee, who were not allowed to rise within the party. They are third and fourth tier of local PPP leaders.”

Uzair Baloch, a cousin of Rehman Dakait, who now heads the committee, first went to jail while protesting on a call made by PPP and so was his father, he added.

Zafar Baloch, a spokesman for the Amn Committee, said that the elected representatives disappointed the people. All uplift projects in Lyari are being carried under a more than three billion rupees special presidential fund, he said. “These elected representatives have nothing to their credit,” he claimed, adding that Gabol has not been barred from Lyari. “Gabol himself does not come to Lyari despite being elected from here. We are ready to provide him protection in Lyari. But if his voters are angry with him, what can we do. Even an MQM minister and a supporter live in Lyari and none of them have ever been attacked or victimised.”

But matters are not as simple as they appear as the Amn Committee now spearheads not just the drive against crime in the area, but also works on social welfare projects -- from restoring public parks to running clinics and supporting education institutions. Police sources say that street crime, rampant all over Karachi, is nonexistent in Lyari. Drugs, which once used to sell openly, are now being sold under wraps. The appearances can, however, be deceptive.

The committee is trying to expand its influence. And in doing this, it is clashing with established forces -- especially the MQM. The tussle is one big cause of the continued violence in the city where more than 70 people have been killed in the first 25 days of January in political assassinations and crime related incidents. These rival groups also accuse one another of running extortion racket, which police officers admit have direct connections with political parties.

Indeed, politics has transformed into a sordid and bloody business in which there are no rules of the game. And the irony is that the central leadership of the political parties and the state institutions not just tolerate it, but in some ways patronise it.

Another disgruntled PPP lawmaker claimed that even the Station House Officers (SHOs) at the Lyari police stations are being appointed on Amn Committee’s recommendations. It is not the local leadership, but Sindh Home Minister Zulfikar Mirza, who has been supporting it, he claimed. “The PPP as a party has vanished from Lyari. Even there have been instances of kidnapping of PPP local leaders -- which was unthinkable in the past.”

The whole problem emerges out of the mindset of a coterie within the PPP that Amn Committee and ANP can be used as an effective force to counter MQM’s muscle power. But this hedging of position by individuals is being done at the cost of the party, PPP insiders say.

“Supporting criminal element is not an answer to a problem. In the long run, it will hurt not just the PPP, but the overall politics of this city,” the PPP lawmaker said. “When we go to Lyari, there appears no security. We feel threatened. Criminals will be calling the shots here in the next elections.”

Some old PPP supporters say that their party has been trapped in Lyari. “The Amn Committee is pro-PPP, but not in the party discipline,” said a veteran PPP worker, who in mid-1980s was an active leader of the People’s Student Federation -- the PPP’s student front. “The PPP has a votebank and demography in its favour in Lyari, but has no organisation. The Amn Committee has not just the organisational structure, but it is also backed by the gun-power.”

Old dwellers of Lyari say that their area, having a strong tradition of democratic struggle against every military rule especially that of General Ziaul Haq, has now transformed. “All the leftwing and nationalists groups which along with PPP workers were the conscience of the area have been wiped out from here. Ideological and honest political workers have taken a backseat or left politics. It is the area of toughies and goons who are now in the forefront,” the former student leader said.

Baloch of the Amn Committee says that his group has no political agenda. “We want to merge with the PPP. But those with vested interests do not want us.”

With the PPP government surviving from one crisis to another and Karachi remains on the boil with ethnic, religious and politically motivated violence, there hardly appears a chance of the change of fortunes for the people of Lyari.

A dangerous beat
One of the Pashto-speaking journalists has been eliminated in Karachi while others have been advised to leave city
By Rahimullah Yusufzai

The small number of Pashtun journalists working in Karachi have been living in fear after the authorities warned some of them to curtail their activities due to threats to their lives in the wake of Wali Khan Babar’s assassination.

Of the three Pashto-speaking reporters covering Karachi on the television channels, Wali Khan Babar of Geo TV has already been eliminated by target killers and ARY’s Faizullah Khan was advised to leave the city to avoid harm. Only one Pashto-speaking journalist is still able to report from Karachi on a private TV channel.

All three filed their reports in Urdu, a language in which they had become fluent after living for years in Karachi. In fact, they were Karachiites and there was no evidence that they had shown ethnic bias in their reporting or were allowed to do so by their organisations.

Wali Khan Babar, whose family hailed from Zhob in Balochistan, was hired in 2007 to work for Geo English, which couldn’t be launched, and was then shifted to Geo TV. He had studied at the Karachi University and his family had made the city its home like hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis coming from the upcountry in search of livelihood. As his face had become familiar due to his appearances on the most-watched Geo TV channel, it was easy for target killers to identify and kill the 28-year old Wali Khan Babar in his car on the evening of January 13 in Liaquatabad. His assassination took place near a police station in a locality that has always been an MQM stronghold.

The fact that he was widely mourned by his journalist colleagues transcending ethnic considerations showed that efforts to divide them on the basis of ethnicity, language, sect or region would fail. His Urdu-speaking male and female work-mates at the Geo TV could be seen on camera wiping away their tears as they remembered the Pashto-speaking Wali Khan Babar. Even in the wider society outside newspaper offices and newsrooms, his tragic death at such a young age was deeply mourned by most Pakistanis irrespective of their caste, creed or ethnicity.

As there was no other apparent reason for his assassination, Wali Khan Babar’s tragic death alarmed other Pashto-speaking journalists in Karachi. The government, in possession of more information due to its intelligence network, didn’t want to take chances and a few Pashtun journalists were alerted to avoid harm.

“Interior Minister Rahman Malik personally phoned me and suggested that I take care of myself as some target killers now in government custody had disclosed that the Pashtun journalists working in Karachi were on the hit-list of terrorists. The minister suggested I should no longer work in Karachi,” explained Faizullah Khan, who originally belongs to Battal town near Mansehra in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Hazara division.

“I stopped working and now my organisation, ARY News, has transferred me to Islamabad,” he added.

According to Faizullah Khan, at least 12 Pashto-speaking journalists in Karachi were on the terrorists’ hit-list. He said sections of the print media in Karachi have also reported the threats facing Pashtun journalists working in the port city. Another source said 16 Pashto-speaking journalists from both the print and electronic media and even those who work in the newsroom as sub-editors and stay in the background were on the hit-list.

If true, this could be part of a plan to ensure that no Pashtun journalist is able to report or edit any news coming out of Karachi. Ironically, the growing Pashtun population in Karachi is stated to be three to four million strong, or 25 percent of the total number of people living in the city. An overwhelming number of Pashtuns in Karachi are young and have come from every Pashto-speaking area in Pakistan including Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Fata, Balochistan and parts of Attock and Mianwali districts in Punjab to find jobs, study or do small businesses. Besides, most Afghan refugees living in Karachi are also Pashto-speakers.

In case the threat against Pashtun journalists forces them to stop working or abandon Karachi, there would be no Pashto-speaking journalist in the city to cover a community that is the second largest in terms of numbers after the Urdu-speakers. This appears to be the objective of the target killers assigned to eliminate those named in the hit-list.

In fact, Wali Khan Babar’s violent death had already scared Pashtun journalists and their organisations. Henceforth, not many Pashtun journalists would dare appear on television and report the events taking place in Karachi. There could be no other effective way in manipulating the media coverage of happenings in Karachi.

Karachi is often described as the biggest Pashtun city in the country. This is true because more Pashtuns live in Karachi than in Peshawar, Quetta, Kabul, Jalalabad and Kandahar, the cities with high concentration of Pashtuns. It is also a fact that the Pashtuns are poorly represented in the political, economic and social life of Karachi. There are only two Pashtun MPAs in the Sindh Assembly and both were elected for the first time in 2008 on the ANP ticket. Lack of Pashtun representation in the provincial assembly and the National Assembly from Sindh, particularly from Karachi and Hyderabad where they have substantial population, is one major reason for the unrest in these big cities.

One had heard of hit-lists of political activists, cops, religious scholars, doctors and other members of the intelligentsia. Now we have this hit-list of journalists belonging to a particular ethnic community working in Pakistan’s biggest and richest city. Journalists have already been the target of killers in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, particularly in Swat and Fata, and lately in Balochistan. Pakistan had the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous place for members of the media as the highest number of journalists were assassinated, imprisoned and threatened in 2010. The latest wave of attacks against journalists of Pashto-speaking descent in Karachi would ensure that Pakistan continued to lead in terms of the dangers facing the mediapersons in the world.

Despite the heightened threats, there would always be journalists willing to risk their lives and practice the profession that they love.

One such journalist is Jamshed Bokhari, a Pashto-speaking reporter with the daily Jang in Karachi. He conceded that he was worried and now more concerned about his security. “We have heard about the hit-list. But we have done nothing wrong and have to continue working,” he said. “I cannot carry a pistol or keep a guard. All I can do is to be careful and do honest journalism as I have been doing all these years,” he argued.

The recent orders by the Supreme Court for removal of former National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) president Ali Raza and the return of mobilisation advances to the government by the RPPs (Rental Power Projects) have once again triggered the debate over judicial activism versus judicial restraint.

There are quarters who laud the apex court’s role in purely economic matters, which they believe are being ruined due to state favouritism and corruption. However, there are those who believe the damage was bigger than the correction intended at. They cite the matters pertaining to fixing of sugar prices, cancellation of Pakistan Steel Mills’ privatisation and so on.

The NBP president was stopped by the court from continuing his fourth term in the office which the petitioner claimed had been awarded to him in violation of the Banking Nationalisation Act, 1994. Under this Act, a person can be appointed as NBP president for not more than two terms.

Raza’s supporters say the asset base of NBP crossed the Rs1 trillion mark in 2010, up from Rs372 billion when he joined ten years ago. The bank’s after-tax profits had also risen from Rs461 million to Rs18 billion over the same period.

This performance does impress his opponents, but they say the government should have given a corporate status to the bank if it wanted to bypass laws applicable on nationalised banks. Under the corporate status, the board of directors is authorised to approve decisions like these.

Jawad Hasan, Advocate Supreme Court and Additional Advocate General Punjab, backs SC’s involvement in purely economic cases. He tells TNS, “It’s the function of the executive to protect the rights of people and if it doesn’t, then the apex court can intervene.”

Jawad Hasan says the issue in question falls under the category of people’s right to trade and profession and the court can take action in cases of public importance under Article 184 (3) of the Constitution of Pakistan.

About the non-compliance of SC orders regarding sugar prices, Jawad says it’s binding on all courts and departments to obey its orders under Article 189. “Anyone not doing that can be proceeded against on charges of contempt under the Article 204. The apex court can proceed against sugar industry players under this article any time if it wants to.”

He does not agree that Article 175 (2) of the constitution limits the role of the apex court. This clause says no court shall have any jurisdiction except conferred upon it by the constitution or any ordinary law. He says it’s the constitution that awards SC the power to protect people’s right to trade, profession and life which are badly affected by wrong economic decisions.

A frequently given common argument against judicial activism is that it violates the sovereignty of parliament as declared by the Constitution of Pakistan and encroaches upon the domain of the executive. Those in support, however, assert that the sovereignty is vested in the constitution, and not the parliament. “The parliament can legislate against greater public interest and to benefit the privileged few,” they claim.

Chaudhary Fawad Advocate, a Lahore-based lawyer, does not support excessive involvement of judiciary in matters related to the country’s economy. He says the world has witnessed judicial activism in many countries and the Indian Supreme Court has taken judicial activism to new heights. “However, the Indian SC refrained itself from indulging into purely economic matters.”

Fawad says the SC has taken over the roles of policy-making, executive and legislature and its involvement in economic matters has harmed the economy. He says the Steel Mills case has laid down a precedent leading to end of the privatisation process in Pakistan. He disagrees with Jawad and says Article 175 (2) does limit SC jurisdiction. Fawad claims SC’s suo motu on major economic projects in the name of corruption has led to a complete breakdown of economic policy.

Fawad believes the SC mostly decides cases according to media perceptions and may not be correct always as judges are not economists. “The recent SC remarks on investment projects and on the conduct of investors have deterred foreign investor from investing in the existing environment,” he tells TNS.

However, Ahmad Rafay Alam, Advocate Supreme Court, says superior courts are not bound by any procedural limitations and the objective to provide justice to all becomes the driving force behind its proceedings. He tells TNS this suo motu jurisdiction is both a remarkable and controversial feature of public interest litigation. “Though it allows the superior courts to free themselves totally from the rules of procedure and precedent, this jurisdiction is too arbitrary and does not sit well within the scheme of Pakistani law.”

The explanation of what Rafay Alam says comes from a senior lawyer having sufficient experience of public interest litigation. He says it is believed where there is no provision of appeal, that law is of no value. “In case of SC decision, a person affected by it has nowhere to go.”

Secondly, he says, as time is too short in writ jurisdiction, judges have to decide immediately on the basis of supporting material provided by the petitioner(s). “It takes the respondents a long time to clear their position.” Citing an example, he says HBL was privatised in 2004, but its status is not clear even after the lapse of seven years as the matter was taken up by court.

“It is a common perception that every state actor is corrupt and inefficient per se which seems to have prompted the SC to intervene in so many cases,” the lawyer adds. He also holds the media responsible for creating hype and building pressure on the judiciary. Referring to Reko Diq case, he says the respondent was issued contempt notice for clarifying its position through a newspaper ad. On the other hand, the petitioner held a press conference just outside the apex court and discussed a sub-judice matter at length but no one took notice, the lawyer concludes.