Lessons from Pakistan to help

It does not matter how outrageous their behaviour is, or how what their demands are and have been, they have been deemed “untouchable” by the powers that be.
The latest drive by the reds to root out the Constitutional Court on the ground of it being unconstitutional is another one of their aggressive and contemptuous moves that treats the Thai public – should we, the non-reds, even assume we are still part of it – like it does not exist. And even if we do, we do not count.
Thomas Jefferson, an American founding father, principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the third president, succinctly stated that democracy was nothing more than mob rule, in which 51 per cent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49 per cent.  He came up with a least-damning form of mass rule – liberal democracy.
He was not joking, and the world has come to terms with it.
But democracy is not the same as oligarchy, nor is it equivalent to ochlocracy or, in present etymology, “mobocracy”. And the line that separates the two comprises the rule of law and the judiciary branch of the government, whose job it is to uphold the rule of law. It is the vital check and balance mechanism in any functional democracy.
That’s why we need to protect the integrity and role of the judiciary, because it is one of the three democratic pillars, the two others being the executive and legislative branches.
In Pakistan, the highest public approval rating, at 70 per cent, has gone to the country’s chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. That figure is in stark contrast to the meagre 21 per cent for the outgoing President Asif Ali Zardari, and 32 per cent for General Pervez Musharraf – the former president during whose tenure Chaudhry was sworn in to the Supreme Court, in 2000, before he rose to become the chief justice in 2005. Since then, he has undertaken a fearless crusade on matters of public interest – against despotism and irregularities such as corruption among various groups including the government.
“The lack of good governance on the part of the executive shifts the burden of responding to the deficiencies of governance toward the judiciary, which is increasingly relied upon by the public for the fulfillment of their aspirations as citizens of Pakistan,” Chaudhry said in an address last week to an international conference of judges in Islamabad.
Chaudhry said that an independent judiciary plays a pivotal role in the eradication of oppression and injustice. Members of the judiciary, he said, had taken an oath of protecting the constitution and thus were responsible for the dispensation of justice to the people. And that goes for the 49 per cent of those who voted against the government, as well.
As chief justice, Chaudhry was sacked twice during the Musharraf presidency and was put under house arrest. In his aggressive use of suo moto action, acting on his own cognizance, Chaudhry has put Pakistan’s politicians, civil bureaucracy and military on notice. He has taken action against corruption as well as abuses of military power. He has nullified commercial contracts, state concessions and election results on the grounds that they were rigged and therefore violated the laws. He has effectively disallowed the military to seek judicial endorsement of a coup using the archaic Doctrine of Necessity. It was his defiance of the then president Pervez Musharraf in 2007 that gave birth to Pakistan’s civil society movement, which has led the country to its first transfer of power from one civilian government to the next, with the country scheduled to hold its next general election on May 11.
To his detractors, Chaudhry is a gadfly, a disturbance, and an obstacle that prevents the government from governing. Some allege that he has further complicated the already enmeshed Pakistani power structure. He has been criticised for being selective in the cases he has pursued. Some have said that no investors in their right mind will invest in Pakistan, given the paralysis of the government.
Regardless of all the harsh criticism, deserved or underserved, Chaudhry has refused to go away quietly. He insists that the judiciary has a role to play in breaking the below-board status quo, and guiding the nation out of its current disorder. Investments will come, say his supporters, once the country is a cleaner place to do business, and the rule of law is respected and enforced.
The jury is still out in judging the Chaudhry era, which will come to an end by December as his term runs out. But the judiciary that Chaudhry has shaped over the past six years of his tenure has undeniably been a force for change toward a just society, where the voice of citizens, even those on the fringe, like the 49 per cent, cannot be silenced or ignored.
A 20th-century Italian philosopher, Vilfredo Pareto, argued that oligarchy was the “unbendable law of human nature” and that democratic institutions would do no more than shift the exercise of power from oppression to manipulation. Before him, Shakespeare asked in “Hamlet”, “To be or not to be?” – is it nobler to sit on our hands and suffer slandering deeds, or to get up and be counted, and, by “opposing them, end them”.
As Ann Rand fittingly said in her “Atlas Shrugged”: “Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant land of an abandoned mind.”