Choosing generals and judges: Breaking with tradition for Pakistan’s best interests
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Pakistan’s general inability to choose between an agreed formula of performance-based merit or the seniority principle as deciding factors in top appointments to the two most powerful establishments in the country – the judiciary and the military – is wreaking political and economic chaos.
Pakistan’s current deeply polarized polity is revolving around a bitter dispute between the opposition led by Imran Khan and the coalition government led by PM Shahbaz Sharif, on who will become the next army chief and how.
Another major national flashpoint has been a dispute between the government and chief justice of Pakistan, as well as between the top judge and his fellow judges, on which judges can be elevated from the high courts to fill up increasing vacancies in the Supreme Court and on what terms – seniority or performance-based merit. This has exposed the top judiciary into an ugly public spat between judges seen as partisan to either the government or the opposition.
Failure to develop a national consensus on the right formula for important appointments has been directly contributing to – and fuelling – political and economic destabilization for decades. Unresolved, this lack of consensus continues to tear Pakistan apart. Since this is a permanent headache, something must be done about this on a permanent basis.
Under the law, the army chiefs are appointed for three years. If this had been enforced strictly, Pakistan should have had a total of 25 army chiefs in its 75 years of existence but has had 15 native chiefs including six whose tenures were exceeded. Of these, three who imposed martial law (Ayub, Zia and Musharraf) gave themselves extensions and another two (Kayani and Bajwa) were given double time in office.
Only four of the 15 army chiefs were appointed on seniority basis. The rest were junior to their colleagues when chosen on the discretion of the prime ministers, a practice which is currently legal under the law but has produced debilitating political outcomes. If there is one lesson from Pakistani history, it is that choosing favourite generals doesn’t give prime ministers any protection.
Indeed, most army chiefs appointed by the prime ministers have ended up ousting their bosses from office, throwing them in jail and sending them into exile. One army chief, General Zia, even hanged Prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto after arresting him and putting him on a sham trial as confessed by one of the judges after his retirement.
Zero percent prime ministers have completed their tenures while about half of the army chiefs have served on an average more than double their time in office.
Adnan Rehmat
Ironically, the Pakistani constitution of 1973 stipulates a five-year term of the prime minister of Pakistan. But zero per cent prime ministers have completed their tenures while about half of the army chiefs have served on an average more than double their time in office.
In terms of impact, a similar affliction plagues the judiciary. Most of Pakistan’s 29 chief justices of the Supreme Court of Pakistan have been appointed at the discretion of the military rulers or elected prime ministers. A change in law in 1997 making the senior most judge automatically the chief justice after his predecessor reaches 65 years of age has meant that tenures of the top judges can vary between a few months to over a decade. A top judge contemptuous of Pakistan’s pluralisms that characterize politics – and there have been some – often results in entrenching political crises.
Like with the generals, hand-picked judges have historically validated military coups, legalized ousters of elected leaders and handed death sentences and long jail terms to prime ministers instead of acting as legal bulwarks for constitutional guarantees of democracy and parliament.
The continued premature ousters of prime ministers and waylaying of parliament by generals and judges in Pakistan, often through historically proven connivance, has accumulatively ensured that even mid-term political or economic stability is impossible, leave alone a long-term trajectory of growth and development.
Since the lingering bitter national dispute between the principles of seniority and discretion in choosing senior appointments to the judiciary and the military is destabilizing Pakistan, an alternative workable formula needs to be urgently carved instead of adhering to black and white criteria that continues to cripple the country.
Democracy is about checks and balances – it is aided not by discretion or arbitrariness but by transparency and accountability. These should be the guiding principles in appointing only the best generals and judges that submit to constitutional obligations and lead their establishments in support of stabilization of Pakistan’s polity and economy, and not undermine it wantonly or unintentionally.
- Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science.
Twitter: @adnanrehmat1
