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issue review Here
lies art Rightward
march
issue When pushed into a
corner, people frequently do stupid things. With a few balls remaining and a
huge total to chase in a cricket match, the batsmen end up slogging
foolishly. Having lost all his earnings, the gambler bets the house on the
last hand. It turns out that governments are no different from people, in
this regard. With an abominable record
of corrupt governance, a combative Supreme Court, a prime minister dismissed
for contempt, and another one facing similar prospects, the government has
resorted (as a last measure) to absolute ridiculousness. In a move that is
hard to explain through law or logic, the federal government has passed the
Contempt of Court Act, 2012 (hereinafter “Act”). Harsh? Perhaps. But
looking at the concerned Act in some detail will vindicate this statement on
two fronts: legal and principle. From a purely legalistic
perspective, the Act suffers from several deficiencies. To begin with,
section 3 of the Act, having collapsed the distinctions between ‘civil’,
‘criminal’ and ‘judicial’ contempt (fair enough), stipulates that
actions of a “public office holder” in “exercise of powers and
performance of functions” (under Article 248(1) of the Constitution) shall
“not amount to commission of contempt of court”. In simpler words, the
president, the prime minister, the chief ministers, the governors along with
federal and provincial cabinet members, while exercising the ‘powers and
functions’ of their office, shall not be liable for contempt of court. And
in this regard, the protection is sought through Article 248(1), which
states that these functionaries “shall not be answerable to any court for
the exercise of powers and performance of functions of their respective
offices.” The fact that protection
of Article 248(1) is rarely invoked is instructive; the purpose of this
provision in the Constitution is to ensure that judicial proceedings against
the federal or provincial governments do not spill over to individually
target the public-officials in charge of carrying out the executive
authority. Away from this, the Act,
by carving out a category of individuals who are ‘above’ the law of
contempt, arguably violates Article 25 of the Constitution (Discrimination).
Furthermore, it also revolts against Article 5(2) of the Constitution, which
makes “obedience to the Constitution and law” (including judgments of
the court) an “inviolable” duty of “every citizen” (including the
prime minister and his cabinet). And perhaps most
pertinently, the new Contempt of Court Act vitiates the spirit of Article
204 (the very Article under which it has been drafted), which gives the
court the power to punish “any person” (with no exceptions) who commits
contempt. In this regard, the Act has already been challenged before the
apex court, and the nation awaits a declarative judicial pronouncement. Perhaps more nefariously,
however, the Act indulges in another (procedural) exercise: it takes pains
in constructing a prolonged process of appeal against a contempt verdict,
suspending the order during the pendency, and requiring the constitution of
a ‘larger bench’ in certain circumstances. All this has been drafted
with one goal in mind: if the legislation survives the judicial review, it
will ensure that the present PPP regime, and its prime minister, limp
through a protracted court process (having not written the Swiss letter), to
somehow make it through the tail-end of the parliament’s term. Turning to the
‘principles’ involved (in sad realisation of the fact that principles,
unfortunately, do not play much part in our governance or jurisprudence),
the PPP must be castigated for picking convenience over ideology, and
marring the fabric of law in the process. By drafting a contempt law that
attempts to immunise a select category of individuals, the legislature has
demonstrated that defence of personalities is more sacred to the government
than upholding the equal protection of law (in pursuit of a classless
society). Furthermore, our able
parliament has also established that completing its term and saving the
current prime minister from disqualification, through employing a protracted
and unwieldy contempt procedure, is paramount to our government, even it
comes at the cost of molesting the law and sacrificing its sanctity. While on the point, it is
perhaps useful to turn our attention to what is the ideology behind
‘contempt of court’, and why has it become the seed of such controversy
in our land? Outside the realm of the
legal fraternity, the contempt of court law is perhaps the most recognised
statutory instrument in our land, next to the Constitution. Featuring in
prime minister’s disqualification, Malik Riaz’s press conference,
charges against NAB and FIA chief, the case against Babar Awan… the
contempt of court law has undeniably played a starring (hypersensitive?)
role in our recent jurisprudence and national dialogue. Without delving into the
legality of these individual cases, it must be asked: is contempt of court
merely a tool, at the disposal of the judiciary, to defend its institutional
sovereignty? Is it an instrument in the hands of the judges through which
they can haul-in any individual who voices dissent or questions them? Or is
there a nobler ethos to the law? The object of the law, as
established by numerous authorities, it seems is two-fold: ensuring
enforcement of court orders (not with the view of asserting a judge’s
supremacy over others, but instead in the belief that enforcement of
impartial judicial verdicts is indispensable to a free and fair society),
and instilling confidence in the legal process (not in any individual judge)
so as to ensure that every litigant is afforded fair and unprejudiced
justice. In this spirit, the contempt proceedings have to be divorced from
the personality of individual judges (who must be accountable, even
critiqued, for their personal conduct). It would be a fallacy to
believe that dignity of the court can be ‘enforced’ through contempt
law. Vindication of the court’s dignity (or that of any individual judge)
emanates from the impartiality of its pronouncements, and not the threat of
contempt proceedings. A rethinking of the
contempt law and (more importantly) the contempt philosophy is required. The
government’s attempt to reform the legislation has been a thoroughly
incompetent exercise, aimed only at safeguarding its political interests at
the expense of molesting the law. The legality of the Act
itself is pending before the Supreme Court. As the honorable judges decide
the fate of this particular legislation, it might also be beneficial for
them to take this opportunity and review their approach to the doctrine of
contempt, with the aim of putting the sanctity of our constitutional
structure above the impulse of personal vindication. The writer is a lawyer
based in Lahore. He has a Masters in Constitutional Law from Harvard Law
School. He can be reached at: saad@post.harvard.edu
It was good to see Theatre
Wallay’s ‘Godot ke Intizar Mein’, an Islamabad play being staged in
Lahore. It was even better than the next-door ‘Pawnay 14 August’, at
Alhamra Hall 1, written by Anwar Maqsood and directed by Dawar Mehmood. The
play was being staged by KoyKats Production. It is rare that the plays
are staged in other cities than the one in which they originate. Even if the
play is popular or is considered to be significant, its performance remains
restricted to that one city. Even the most prominent ones with relatively
lively theatre tradition and vibrant stage like the ones in Lahore and
Karachi are not taken to other cities. The obvious reasons can be
of logistics and the finances to back the enterprise. Since most of the
plays are sponsored, it is difficult to make the sponsors agree to dish out
more for the play to be staged in other cities. Amateurs do most of these
plays, and they have other obligations to fulfil than their devotion to
theatre. It is after all not a full-time profession, while the unrelenting
demand of earning a livelihood takes precedence. ‘Waiting for Godot’ is
probably the most difficult play to stage because it defies the general
rules of dramaturgy. Aristotle defined drama as imitation of action and
‘Waiting for Godot’ actually is imitation of inaction. And the play as
it proceeds further continues to defy the Aristotelian unities. The play
written after the end of the second world war, with Europe in total
destruction, threatened by the imminence of a nuclear catastrophe, was an
apt comment on the stage that human development had reached where it has
acquired the power to totally annihilate itself while failing to pay
sufficient attention to using the same outreach for the betterment of its
lot. It had the inevitable and
frustrating ring of going back to the primal philosophical questions about
the purpose of existence that man had always asked himself, and yet again
failing to get a direct answer. This fruitless intellectual pursuit was
labelled as absurd and the theatre movement that it generated for want of a
better phrase was called the “Theatre of the Absurd” by critic Martin
Esslin. The play has been staged
many a time in Pakistan with varying response. Probably the first time
staged as an adaptation, it was titled ‘Subha Hone Tak’ and the brave
initiative was taken by its director Ali Ahmed in the late 1950s. In those
days Alhamra was trying to put its act together with Faiz as its new
secretary and Ali Ahmed’s initial plays, all very serious and representing
high theatre, pointed to the direction Alhamra was planning to take. It then
staged many good plays in the 1960s. In the absence of any
action and proper speeches as in Elizabethan theatre, the burden shifts to
either brilliant performances or a very good production design relying on
highly innovative set and imaginative usage of props. Lighting too can play
a decisive role. It is a challenge that all theatre people want to meet head
on and thus graduate to be seasoned theatre hands. Theatre Wallay was brave
enough to accept the challenge in Urdu. The Alliance Francaise has
staged other French classics like ‘Tartuffe’, ‘Lesson’ and ‘No
Exit’ and intends to stage more French plays. Theatre Wallay, a group
formed in 2005 in Islamabad, is willing to extend a helping hand. The
support of the Alliance Francaise should be fully availed and more plays
produced in one city and staged in the other should be made a regular
feature. The director Tughraq Ali seemed enthusiastic enough and his team of
Salman Zaheer, Tajdar Zaidi, Safeer Ullah, Osman Tariq, Abdul Rehman and
Syed Hasan were equally enthused to carry the mission forward. Usually it is the work of
the Arts Council to make the facilities and the funds available for the
plays of one city to be taken to the other. The efforts of the Pakistan
National Council of Arts (PNCA) in staging festivals have shown some
improvement over the years but it still remains a sporadic activity. The
National Theatre or Drama Festival should have specific dates like in months
of March or April so that the various groups in the country know that they
also have a platform other than their cities to perform and so make
preparations for it in the process of doing their productions. The Alhamra have staged
festivals as well as Punjab Arts Council but these too has remained on and
off affairs while the Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop, other than the Youth
festivals now for some years, has slowed down the feverish pace of its
activities due to the security concerns and the drying out of sponsorship
support. caption Godot comes to Lahore.
A man prepares a
powder which compels the eater to speak nothing but the truth. One day, as
he was carrying the sack of his powder on his donkey across a canal, the
animal slipped and the entire content got diluted in water. Once this
‘contaminated’ water reached all homes and people drank it, they started
speaking the truth. They spoke honestly about what they felt and the city
was a chaos and in constant quarrel because no one was able to face the
facts. This story by some
Egyptian writer illustrates how the human society is constructed — on the
basis of lies. As a child, one is taught to speak the truth but as he grows
up he realises how impossible it is to lead that ideal life. One has to
conceal the real in order to survive peacefully. Perhaps, the ability to
choose between the truth and the lie is a feature exclusive to humans. While
other species act according to their instinct, man decides on the options of
various versions of a single reality, event or possibility and then prefers
the one that suits him, regardless of whether it is factually right or wrong
as long as it serves his purpose. Hence we tell lies about our past, present
and even our future too, knowing fully well that it is a distorted depiction
of reality. The lies are not just confined to the personal lives and family
matters, they extend to the realms of politics, business, sports, law,
academics and information media. Interestingly, both the speaker and the
listener are aware of and accept the fibs presented as facts. Only when it comes to the
question of ethics, the issue assumes a crucial significance; since a number
of lies are told for some better cause and not to deceive someone. For
instance, a doctor may hide from a cancer patient his actual condition.
Likewise, the teachers often do not reveal the true standing of a student in
order for them to keep struggling. In the media, truth is sometimes
deliberately held back for reasons of state security. In sports, a spin
bowler communicates to the batsmen his intended throw but changes it
deliberately; ditto for hockey, tennis and other sports. Politics thrives on
lies — great promises and claims — when the politicians know these
won’t be fulfilled or achieved. We happily live with this
scheme of things, detaching the issue of morality from our pragmatic course
of existence. This process is observed in the world of art too because,
here, we perpetually enjoy false constructions. When watching a film, the
spectator is moved by the story and performance of actors, knowing that the
hero is impersonating someone else and the incidents are not based upon his
actual life. A man marries on the screen to a woman who is not his wife or
an actor is shown as the daughter of somebody who is not related to her in
real life. Yet, we willingly suspend our disbelief and start believing in
these fabrications so much that we cry, love or hate those characters. Similarly, a writer of
fiction creates a story which has nothing to do with reality but we connect
with it so much that we weep, become agitated or enjoy reading about certain
episodes. The power of fabrication is such that often people start believing
in it, to the extent that a book of fiction may invoke protest and strong
reactions — like issuing decrees to kill the author. Somehow, the more
removed a literary work is from reality, the more it is enjoyed; is in fact
described as ‘original’ by readers and critics. In visual arts,
fabrication takes place at all levels. A man admires the portrait of ‘Mona
Lisa’ painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the sixteenth century. He likes the
face and figure of the female, appreciates the landscape in the background
and is excited (as well as perplexed) about the smile on her lips, but is
oblivious to some basic truth — that what he is looking at is just a
combination of different colour pigments glued on a poplar panel. The model,
Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, is long dead with her
mysterious smile yet nobody notices or admits this ‘fact’ because
everyone is allured to the illusion created by the great Renaissance
painter. In fact, the presence of
these lies in our life, and more than that in our art, satiates an
elementary desire within us — to view the world differently. This
practice, like dreams, leads to the world of imagination and fantasy. We
create imaginary beings, situations and settings both in our sleep and
during our wakeful hours. A child does it for his play and amusement; the
adults pursue and perfect this in order to be recognised as great writers,
actors, directors and artists. Thus the world of art is a
passage from reality to illusion or from truth to lies, since illusions and
lies can be more interesting, engaging and enchanting than plain truths.
However, as compulsive liars know that only a lie closer to life will have a
believable quality, artists when they tell ‘lies’ try to make it as
acceptable as the world in our surroundings. On the contrary, their
creations are not dependent upon reality since these acquire their
independent status, as valid as truth yet detached from it. And only a
perfect liar among the artists can be a great creative individual, like
Pablo Picasso, Paul Auster and Penelope Cruz.
Those images are
back: a wall of smug -looking men on a stage, arms linked and raised
heavenward. Yes, rightwing elements are once again uniting to ‘save’
Pakistan. Most of these men wear beards, some wigs — but all wear
sanctimonious expressions and all use inflammatory oratory. The Difa-e-Pakistan
Council’s long march to Islamabad last week is both a case of déjà vu as
well as a preview of the coming events. We have seen it all before: the
coming together of rightwing forces whose specific aim seems to defeat any
attempt to take the country in any sort of progressive direction. Such
alliances have often been surprisingly well-funded and have tended to
protect jehadi and defence interests. The star of the existing
alliance seems to be none other than Hafiz Saeed of Jamaat ud Daawa, a
controversial group formerly known as Lashkar-e-Taiba and often branded as
the ‘political wing’ of the militant Lashkar. This gives some indication
of both the alliance’s orientation as well as the level of its funding,
and it should be interesting to see how they play their cards (or cadres)
over the following months. Religious parties have
never been successful in Pakistan’s elections, they have never been in a
position to form a government, but they have always exerted undue influence
due to their ability to incite violence in the name of religion.
Rabble-rousing using religion is pretty handy for these groups since people
are so angry and frustrated that any invitation to protest is eagerly
accepted and a lynch mob forms in just a matter of minutes. Using religion
and ‘defence’ of Islam as a justification, the mob can then vent its
anger on some so-called apostate and execute him or her without fear of
prosecution or any sort of repercussions. The feel-good factor in
such violence is that it is regarded a holy deed and a duty. It also helps
to vent the rage felt by most people at the hardships and frustrations of
their lives. That violent rhetoric propels people towards violent deeds is
something not comprehended by most of our political leaders, not just the
mullahs. They fail to understand that baying for blood might be a successful
tactic in the short term but that in the long term it will backfire and they
themselves will become the victims of the intolerance and hatred they have
fed. The history of right-wing
electoral alliances shows that as far as election strategy is concerned
Pakistan’s rightwing parties have long understood the motto of the
Dumas’s Three Musketeers “United we stand, divided we fall.” It will
be interesting to see how they align themselves for the coming election and
how non-right wing forces might try to counter their fire and brimstone. In the meantime, stay
tuned for more rabble -rousing, marches, anti-America oratory and much
mention of religion...elections are just round the corner, and everybody
needs to get their message across. Best wishes, Umber Khairi
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