Controversial SC Ruling in Pak Presidential Race; Sharif's Choices for COAS and Chief Justice

Opposition parties have protested Pakistan Supreme Court's ruling on pulling in the presidential election date at federal government's request. Nawaz Sharif is set to make three key choices this year: Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Chief Justice of Pakistan Supreme Court and Republic's President. How will these choices impact the nation in the next several years? Viewpoint From Overseas (VPOS) host Faraz Darvesh discusses these subjects with Sabahat Ashraf (iFaqir), Javed Ellahie and Riaz Haq.



Pakistani Judges' Role in President's Race; Appointments of Army Chief and Chief Justice from WBT TV on Vimeo.

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World Media Lambaste Candidate Zardari

While Asif Ali Zardari’s meteoric rise will be complete with his seemingly inevitable election to become president of Pakistan, grave doubts about his character, based on persistent allegations of corruption and violence, will continue to linger in the minds of many in Pakistan and the world. Here's a sampling of how Mr. Zardari is seen by the world media:

Excerpt from Wall Street Journal's Global View Column by Bret Stephens:

Al Qaeda and the Taliban feed on chaos, and a Zardari presidency will almost certainly provide more of it. For Pakistanis, this is a self-inflicted wound and a rebuke to their democracy. For the rest of world, it's a matter of hoping that Pakistan will somehow muddle through. For now, however, this looks like a Category 5 hurricane, dark and vast and visible just offshore.

Just how bad is Mr. Zardari? It would be a relief if it were true that he was merely suffering from dementia, a diagnosis offered by two New York psychiatrists last year. But that diagnosis seems to have been produced mainly with a view toward defending himself against corruption charges in a British court.

Mr. Zardari -- who earned the moniker "Mr. 10%" for allegedly demanding kickbacks during his wife's two terms in office -- has long been dogged by accusations of corruption. In 2003, a Swiss magistrate found him and Mrs. Bhutto guilty of laundering $10 million. Mr. Zardari has admitted to owning a 355-acre estate near London, despite coming from a family of relatively modest means and reporting little income at the time it was purchased. A 1998 report by the New York Times's John Burns suggests he may have made off with as much as $1.5 billion in kickbacks. This was at a time when his wife was piously claiming to represent the interests of Pakistan's impoverished masses and denouncing corrupt leaders who "leave the cupboard bare."


Excerpt from UK's Times Online:

An election victory would be a huge turn of fortune for a man who was nicknamed “Mr Ten Per Cent” because of allegations, denied by him, that he received kickbacks when his wife was the Prime Minister. Mr Zardari, 52, has spent a total of 11 years in prison on a variety of charges, longer than any other Pakistani politician.

Excerpts from AP Report:

Asif Ali Zardari, the man poised to become Pakistan's next president, is still known as "Mr 10 Per cent" because of corruption allegations. Now his own lawyers say he may have suffered from mental health problems within the past year.

That has left many Pakistanis wondering: Is this the best man for the job?

"People have short memories, but not that short," said Rafat Saeed, 42, as he parked his car in the bustling city of Karachi following a week of political turmoil and relentless violence by Islamic militants.

"His name is synonymous with corruption!" Friends and family say Zardari, widower of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, is fine now and fit to rule. But the questions over his psychological state could continue to haunt him.


Excerpt from New York Times:

Switzerland has released millions of dollars in assets belonging to Asif Ali Zardari, a leading Pakistani politician who is expected to be named the country’s president next week, Swiss authorities said.

The value of the assets is about $60 million, said a Swiss official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the figure had not been disclosed publicly.

The Swiss action came as a shock to Daniel Devaud, the judge in Geneva who originally investigated the charges. He said it should not be interpreted as a sign of Mr. Zardari’s innocence.

“It would be very difficult to say that there is nothing in the files that shows there was possibly corruption going on after what I have seen in there,” Mr. Devaud said in a telephone interview. “After I heard what the general prosecutor said, I have the feeling we are talking about two different cases.”


Excerpt from The Economist:

Whatever Mr Zardari’s past reputation, optimists hope that the gathering of power in his hands as president might, just possibly, bring a little more political stability to Pakistan. At the least, it would make the PPP accountable for its handling of the country’s twin crises: a plunging economy and spiralling Taliban insurgency, which on August 21st saw a suicide attack outside a munitions factory in the town of Wah that killed 67 people. Hitherto, the government has seemed too absorbed in bickering between the PPP and PML (N) to give much thought to these problems. Indeed, it has had no permanent finance minister since May, when Mr Sharif withdrew his nine ministers from the government.

Can Mr. Asif Ali Zardari, expected to become the 13th president of Pakistan this Saturday, succeed with this elephant of massive corruption charges in the room, and still help unify Pakistan in its most difficult hour? Can he prove the media pundits and the skeptics wrong? Only time will tell. Let’s hope for the sake of Pakistan and world peace that he is truly a changed man, and pray that he does succeed in bringing peace and prosperity to Pakistan and its neighborhood.

Related Links:

PBS Frontline

Here's a video clip of Asif Ali Zardari interviewed on the eve of Pakistani elections in February, 2008:

South Asia Community on Hillary vs. Obama

The views of South Asian-Americans are heavily influenced by the perceived positions of the presidential candidates regarding the South Asian nations. While there are no polls indicating their preferences, there is anecdotal evidence that the Democrats are likely to attract the largest share of South Asian-American votes this year.

The Clintons have had quite a love affair with things Indian since Bill Clinton's days in the White House. Indians see the couple as friends of India and credit them for the close ties between the two nations and the start of the outsourcing trend from the US to India that has intensified in the recent years. On the contrary, Pakistanis still remember Bill Clinton's patronizing speech on PTV during his brief visit there in March 2000.

While some Indians seem pleased with Barack Obama's rhetoric about "sending US troops into Pakistan", many see him as an unknown quantity as far as India is concerned. Some Indians were also turned off by a document released by Obama surrogates critical of President and Senator Clinton's links to India in an effort to portray Mrs. Clinton as having a poor record on outsourcing and protecting American jobs. The three-page piece of opposition research, titled "Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)'s Personal Financial and Political Ties," was obtained from a source unaffiliated with the Obama campaign. The "Punjab" reference is an apparent reference to a joke that Mrs. Clinton made last year at a fund-raiser hosted by a top Indian-American supporter. "I can certainly run for the Senate seat in Punjab and win easily," she was quoted as saying. The "Punjab" here refers to the Indian state of Punjab.

In the past elections (including Bush's first term), most Pakistanis have played it safe by supporting Republican candidates for President, based on the common perception that Democrats have been much more pro-India than the Republicans. However, this trend changed in 2004 when most Pakistani-Americans voted for Democratic candidate John Kerry as a protest against the Iraq war and Bush's perceived anti-Muslim bias. This year, it is likely that the Pakistanis would again support a Democratic candidate in spite of their reservations about both Obama and Clinton. Obama's aggressive stance about sending troops into Pakistan initially turned off many Pakistanis. However, Obama has been trying to clarify and backpedal on those remarks. Obama has said there was "misreporting" of his comments, that "I never called for an invasion of Pakistan or Afghanistan." He said rather than a surge in the number of troops in Iraq, there needs to be a "diplomatic surge" and that U.S. troops should be withdrawn within a year.

Among Indians, there seems to be a generation gap in how they perceive Clinton and Obama. While the first generation immigrants from India tend to favor Clinton, the younger Indians are supporting Obama. An Indian commentator Alka Sabherwal of Danville, CA, attributes Obama's opposition among first-generation Indian-Americans to "racial prejudice".

While some Pakistani-Americans have serious reservations about US-Pakistan relations in an Obama administration, many of them support Barack Obama because of his unequivocal opposition to the Iraq war. Some Pakistani-Americans favor Obama because of the fact that he is the son of an African Muslim who lived in Indonesia as a child with a Muslim step-father. Their expectation is that he may have a soft spot for Muslims because of his Muslim heritage and early life in the largest Muslim nation. Of course, it would be political suicide for Obama to profess any love for Muslims or Islam in the current political environment. Even the hint of any Islamic connection could be bad for his campaign.

Obama has to constantly bend over backwards and re-iterate total and unqualified support for Israel to avoid conflict with AIPAC, the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in the US. While Obama's commitment for direct talks with Iran and a summit with the Islamic countries to discuss and resolve the current distrust has raised hackles in some quarters, it does offer a promise to many Pakistanis and Muslims in the United States for a better relationship between the US and the Islamic world in a future Obama administration.

Comparing Ralph Nader and Imran Khan

Amidst the dismissive comments and the howls of protests from Democrats, Ralph Nader has entered the 2008 US presidential race. As expected, his reasons include the lack of debate among the mainstream candidates on what he sees as the core issues of the day. No stranger to US presidential politics, Ralph Nader (born February 27, 1934, in Winsted, Connecticut) is an Arab American attorney of Lebanese descent, author, lecturer, political activist, and currently a candidate in the United States presidential election, 2008. Areas of particular concern to Nader are consumer rights, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government. A recent documentary titled "The Unreasonable Man" chronicles the life of Ralph Nader. The title "The Unreasonable Man" comes from a famous quote attributed to the early 20th century British playwright George Bernard Shaw who said, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Laying out the case for his candidacy, Nader has told the media that include NBC's "Meet The Press" that he wants to bring significant but neglected issues to the table such as the lack of single-payer universal health coverage, the bloated US military budget and the failed US policy of unqualified support for Israel in the Middle East. Attacking both Clinton and Obama in an interview, Nader said, "Obama is an overly cautious captive of his handlers and Clinton is a panderer and a flatterer.”

Nader took Obama to task for changing his position on the Palestinian issue. It should be noted that in March 2007, Obama said at a small gathering in Iowa, "Nobody's suffering more than the Palestinian people. But here's Obama's position in February 2008: "The Security Council should clearly and unequivocally condemn the rocket attacks against Israel.… If it cannot...I urge you to ensure that it does not speak at all," Obama wrote to Ambassador Khalilzad, adding he understood why Israel was "forced" to shut down Gaza's border crossings." What has happened in the 11 months between then and now is an object lesson and a reminder of the intense pressure under which presidential candidates stake out positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the demonstrated effectiveness of the Israeli lobby in the United States.

While Ralph Nader may succeed in bringing the neglected but important issues into the US political debate, he has almost no chance of being elected to any office. "Obviously, the system is triple-rigged against any small candidate," he said. "All we can do is try to loosen it up, challenge it, bring it to account in some court cases and build for the future. We can also keep an exciting, practical, progressive agenda before the American people — get more people to run for local, state and national office."

Ralph Nader reminds me of Imran Khan in Pakistan. Imran Khan is a well-meaning, well-respected, and honest former cricket hero bringing out the issues of democracy, civil society and rule of law, that the mainstream parties do not particularly care about. But the presence of Imran Khan on the Pakistani political scene does offer hope for the future.