Pakistan's Judges

It seems that a lot of journalists who mention Pakistan don't know what's going on there. Not that I do, but I do know this much.

The argument over reinstating the removed Supreme Court judges is not trivial. It is basically synonymous with the question of whether to get rid of Musharraf. Musharraf removed them because they ruled that his hold on power was illegal. And if reinstated, that ruling will probably stand.

Nawaz Sharif is the power player who is most vocal about reinstating them, which is why he has the support of the lawyers' movement. Not coincidentally, Sharif was also the man overthrown by Musharraf's coup in 1999. Sharif's party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, is also the most Islamist of the three groups with power (the other two are Musharraf and the People's Party).

The more secular and democratic People's Party seems to have tried to play an impossible position in its negotiations over reinstating the judges. They are interested in having a working democracy, so they want the judges reinstated. But they have strong ties to the West and are scared of someone like Sharif trying to take power, so they don't exactly want Musharraf to be forced out. So they argued for something like reinstating the judges, but limiting their power, or also keeping Musharraf's replacement judges. But this wasn't what Sharif was looking for, so he pulled his party out of the ruling coalition.

I also think our press is too quick to be supportive of the Pakistani lawyers, and thus Sharif. They're lawyers, and thus must be pro-Western and democratic, right? Well, although their role is democratic, this might be one of those instances where a government of the people, for the people, and by the people would really want to screw the U.S. Just as there are lawyers in the U.S. with viewpoints representing the whole political spectrum, lawyers in Pakistan are the same. However, the Pakistani equivalent of supporting the right to bear arms is supporting Qaeda. The lawyers cannot be assumed to be more liberal than the rest of the country just because they are lawyers.

Needless to say, it's all just way too complicated.