Guaranteeing the Rule of Law and Independence of the Judiciary in Pakistan
at the Commonwealth Ethnic Bar Association
October 30, 2000

Distinguished Guests:

I am honored to address this gathering of the Commonwealth Ethnic Bar Association.

I accepted the brief to carry coal to New Castle in addressing issues of legal interests. I understand from Jeremy Bentham that, in certain cases, ignorance of law is not punished. 

I promise to speak the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I learnt from Lord Darling that:

 Law ‘is a very strange one; it cannot compel anyone to tell the truth…But what the Law can do is to give you seven years for not telling the truth’. 

Friends,

It is with a sense of nostalgia that I come to England’s London, a country where I studied.  I come to these Inns of Court where my Father, and my country’s Father, walked and worked, spoke and studies, laughed and worried.

I speak here at a difficult time for my country, a country that has drifted rudderless in a sea of conflict and violence since democracy was decapitated four years back in November 1996. 

The dismissal by decree of a democratic government enjoying the support of parliament and the people set the stage for the decline of the rule of law. 

The flouting of, the Constitution, which provides for fair elections by installing a partisan interim administration, the manipulation of the vote and a fraudulent mandate set the stage for the rise of an insecure leader. A leader with paranoia as overwhelming as the mandate his party was given by the Generals. 

The criminatlisation of the Parliamentary opposition, the mob attack on the Supreme Court and the terror unleashed against the press reduced the judiciary to a helpless and silent spectator.

Distinguished members of the Bar,

My own life mirrors the larger Pakistani canvas of the last half- century of law, politics and a politicized judiciary.

Contrary to globally accepted values, Pakistan is one of the few nations where the military today rules, where judges are sacked, arrested and made to swear new oaths of allegiance.

The generals claim they are experts on freedom, and will take the country from "sham democracy" to "true democracy". 

When the press is critical of Generals, the press comes in for a battering.  As dictatorship continues, the crisis deepens. 

Even as it does so, it weakens political structures, political parties, the judiciary, administrative framework of the country and even the constitution with arbitrary amendments passed by decree.

By so doing, dictatorship, when it withdraws, sows the seeds of its own return. And Pakistan falls victim to repeated military interventions.

That cycle can be broken, if we learn from this experience, to stand up to the dismissal of democratic governments through edicts to declare that the first lesson for a lawful society is democracy and more democracy. 

Strong institutions strengthen the rule of law, giving birth to an orderly society, taking its place with pride in the world community.

I come here this evening as a citizen of country that is far than ordinary. It is a nation that exploded six nuclear devices, in response to India’s five, in a game of nuclear upsmanship, in 1998. It fought 3 wars with neighboring India in the last 50 years. Last spring, both countries nearly went to war again over the frozen glaciers of a place called Kargil.

The ruling elite, with its contempt for the constitution, has robbed the one hundred and forty million courageous citizens of their right to determine the direction of their destiny. 
The Commonwealth and Britain have rightly called for a restoration of the democratic process. Leadership is about speaking out boldly. Leadership is bout defending human values. 

It pains me to see Islamabad at odds with the prevailing international value system. Values that include freedom, human rights, minority, ethnic and gender rights. It pains me to hear of soldiers dying on the borders, of bomb blasts killing people at bus stops as they make their way to work. It pains me to see the regime pressured by militant organisations dictating an agenda of hate. An agenda that denies our people their rightful role as responsible citizens of a responsible country playing by the rules of the international game to gain peace, progress and stability.

The Generals are unable to grapple with the challenges of democratization, proliferation, terrorism, economic implosion and peace in the region. Their regime is prisoner to a myopic worldview, which died when Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Increasingly, there is an international mantra being sung about terrorism and Taliban and Islamabad.

The people are restive and ready to rise. But the political class is divided. Between those seeking fresh elections, those seeking the restoration of the suspended assemblies, those seeking power through judicial elimination of their winnable rivals and fundamentalists who see themselves as King Makers.

The challenge is to develop a consensus that the path to revival lies through a fair free and impartial reference to the people through elections and the transfer of power to the people’s representatives.

For much of my life, I thought fair, free and impartial elections could be easily conducted. But I have seen elections manipulated even as observers watched an orderly procedure. 

Unless the manner of the rigging of the 1990 and 1997 elections is determined and stopped, the fundamentalists will continue to play King Maker, ridding them of every unrepresentative puppet as he becomes unpopular just to bring another.

I deliberately use the word “he” for those brought in by extremist Kingmakers. In their vocabulary, there is little place for a “she”.

So an army chief who is on the ground can be sacked if the King Makers wish it so. An army chief in the air can become the chief executive if the King Makers agree. The Kings think they exercise power but the King Makers whisper when they’re going even before the Kings know it. 

And when their manipulations bankrupt the process, the King Makers withdraw handing over to politicians to pull the country out of the crisis. As soon as that happens, they move in again.

And public hate is built by fuelling charges of corruption as the raison d ‘etre of democratic death rather than an honest investigation allowing the law to determine the veracity of the accusations.

In all, five governments since 1985 were dismissed on unsubstantiated charges of corruption.
I admit that we, the political parties, also made mistakes.

One mistake was the inability to devise a mechanism for impartial investigation of corruption charges against members of a sitting government. 

But now we all pay the price.

It’s time for us to develop a consensus on impartial investigation, prosecution and trial of those charged with corruption in this, the age of transparency. 

In so doing, one major plank that permits Kingmakers to derail democracy, take power and undermine the judiciary goes.

For much of my life, I believed that elections were a magic key which solved the democracy problem and with it the rule of law. I thought: once we win elections truth will triumph over tyranny. 

How wrong I was. 

It took more than two decades to realize that elections are only one part of a pluralistic democracy. 

I have seen election results become a farce to deny the peoples mandate. I have seen my mandate mocked by elements within the military, judiciary and bureaucracy. I have heard them declare, she can be Prime Minister of Islamabad, the capital, but we will stop her from governing Pakistan, the country.

Whilst I should have been Tony Blair, I became Ken Livingstone.

This gave rise to a state within a state where there was a government and there wasn’t a government. 

As twice Prime Minister, my government was largely denied the right to appoint judges by an entrenched establishment that saw some members of the judiciary as their key to killing democracy. 

Ironically, the failure of the judiciary in resolving real or perceived grievances in a manner publicly beyond criticism, forced groups to look at the military as their savior.

The inability of the judiciary to protect the Opposition, press, and even itself, from the fascist assaults of the Nawaz regime led to jubilation when the military intervened just one year back.

The challenge is to build an independent judiciary. But how does one go about doing that when a handful of dishonest, politicized judges packed in during dictatorship, continue to sit, and are even promoted and rewarded?

Technically, a Judge can be removed from office. Substantively that is a near impossibility except by the Generals

Generals have formed political parties too. General Hameed Gul admitted forming the Opposition to my Party in the elections of 1988. General Durrani admitted skimming money off public sector banks to bankroll candidates against my Party in the General Elections of 1990. General Musharaf is on record stating that the last elections did not give the second Nawaz regime a mandate although the army was in every polling booth. 

Political interference by the Generals led to the break up of the country in 1971. More dangerously, it weakens the very integrity of the country.

This month I wrote the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan sending him copies of handwritten notes of the Chief Prosecutor asking accountability courts to “behave”. By behave he presumably meant formalizing his disqualification of political leaders prejudged guilty. I understand that the hand written note of the Prosecutor is available on the PPP web site. 

Those judges who “behave” will continue in office after democracy is restored. Above accountability, they can fulfill their political agendas through judicial abuse. That deep is the rot that must be stemmed.

It can be stemmed through judicial accountability. However, a consensus is presently missing.

Another way is to change the present contempt law free public scrutiny of judgments once delivered.

The international community can fund NGOs to scrutinize judgments in cases of political discrimination as well as that concerning discrimination against religious minorities and women.

International financial institutions can focus on the law enforcement machinery constituted of investigators, prosecutors and judges. The entire machinery needs better funding for better performance. 

Friends,

I have seen the judge who butchered justice in ordering the judicial murder of my Father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, elected Senator. 

A Judge, who dishonestly legitimized the overthrow of my first government, was elected President of Pakistan. 

This same man stands accused by a former President of "taking briefcases of money" to bribe other judges in a famous 1997 case. 

The Election Commission rejected Justice Tarrar’s nomination for the presidency. Justice Qayyum, on leave for his Mother’s funeral, rushed back to grant a stay. And Tarrar was elected.

As for the bribery charges, Tarrar, as a former Judge, like former generals, is immune to prosecution in real terms. 

Last month, a key supporter of mine was brutally axed to death, burnt and his bones left to dissolve in a saline irrigation outfall. The killers admitted that they had been paid for and assured safety by a political opponent. The Inspector General Police rushed to Larkana to hush up the case.

Larkana has been selected for the first round of local elections and those who oppose my party are to be supported, even if they are prime suspects in a murder most gruesome.

Four years back, my brother Murtaza was gunned down in the streets of Karachi. I charged that he had been killed to overthrow my government. My opponents cruelly countered that I had had him killed.

An independent British investigation team was stopped from investigating the murder. A judicial inquiry exonerating my husband was hushed up. Four judges, two magistrates and four investigators were changed to fabricate a case against my husband.

One of the officers was asked to pervert the course of justice and be rewarded; in the event he declined, he was threatened with implication. He fled the country for England rather than bury justice. Today he has joined the British legal system.

But how many can do that? And that is why I ask the international community to step forward and assist the process of justice. In Pakistan and everywhere else where it is under assault.

The twentieth century was the century when freedom triumphed. But if we walk away now, the past could come back to haunt us once again.

The international community can focus on better funding for law enforcement and judiciary, funding for NGO’s prepared to scrutinize wrongful prosecution and trial, funding for the UN Rapporteur on Judges and Judiciary, and others established in regional forums, to hire independent investigators for independent scrutiny of judgments and prosecutions deemed politically motivated by parliamentarians.

Friends,

Prime Ministers can be imprisoned, hanged and disqualified. Generals and Judges too in theory. Reality is different.

Lord Acton said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Unless Judges and Generals are accountable along with Prime Ministers and Parliamentarians, power can and will be abused.

But honest Judges need protection too. Pakistan is a poor country. An accountability judge that refuses to “behave” can be sent home—and lose the fourfold increase in salary recently granted.

Early this year, the Junta’s Law Secretary, a sitting judge of the high court, hiding under a blanket, in the darkness of the night, went to secretly meet a Supreme Court Judge asking him to behave or be sacked.

Soon thereafter, the night of the long knives took place. Almost half the Judges of the Supreme Court were unceremoniously sent home. 

Judges can only be independent when they can do justice without fear and favor. And when they know that justice based on cronyism and disfavor will be punished.

My Party has written the United Nations Rapporteur on Judges and the Judiciary to investigate charges of judicial impropriety in the case in which I was judicially abused.
Former British Attorney General, Sir John Morris, has expresses his reservations in the words, “Looking at the case as a whole, there are grounds for grave misgivings as to the fairness of the trial”

Two American Chief Justices wrote, “An American court would not recognize the conviction as valid in the United states”.

A Queen’s Counsel wrote, “An English court would hold that such flaws were so fundamental that the convictions should, for that reason alone, be quashed”.

A recently retired judge of Pakistan’s Supreme Court opined “There is absolutely no case either against Mr. Zardari or Ms. Bhutto…both of them are entitled to acquittal” and 

“God may help us when judges become partisan”.

Pakistani Human Rights Groups have suggested that Pakistan establish a constitutional court to deal with constitutional issues. A constitutional court could free the ordinary courts from the enormous political pressures that are brought to bear in a country that has spent half its existence under the Generals.

Another proposal is for the law on conflict of interest. Under the present law, it is left to an individual judge to decide for himself whether he has a conflict of interest. 

In my case, the Supreme Court Chief Justice over whom I had raised no objections, declined to hear my case citing conflict of interest. Yet those judges against whom conflict of interest concerns had been raised insisted on trying my party, my family and myself.

Two score and more cases were filed against my Mother, my husband and myself. Each case individually gave rise to other petitions and appeals. We were crushed under a mountain of litigation. The purpose was to mentally, physically and financially incapacitate us from performing our political duties, defending ourselves or even looking after our families. 

Naively, the regime believed it could entrench itself by incapacitating the leader of opposition through judicial abuse. I was shuttled back and forth from city to city spending whole days in court. Leaving to catch one plane after another. I was disoriented and would wake up at nights wondering which city and roof I was in and under. I was totally unable to peruse documents against my self, to brief lawyers or to draw up a defence strategy.

My funds were frozen and the state refused to fund my defense or release my own funds for the same purpose. The Government announced the order freezing my accounts four hours before the Judge had signed it.

During the course of the case, state funds were used for half page advertisements proclaiming my guilt before the verdict was delivered. The numerous contempt petitions I filed against the regime were allowed to gather dust.

Judges sacked by my government and seeking revenge tried us. Their cruelty and how they mocked justice brutally and openly is before my eyes as I speak here tonight. 

Judges that had worked as legal retainers for the Prime Minister’s family concerns tried me, as leader of the opposition. Some of them, with bank loans from state banks were under pressure of business concerns going wrong if they did right with me. One Judges son worked with a parliamentarian belonging to the ruling party. He assisted the prosecution. It was interpreted as the government paying cold cash to the Judge through his son to get my family and me. 

Another judge had been deputy attorney general for the dictator who had kept me behind bars for nearly six years. His Father had sentenced my Father to death. I had sacked him and his brother was elected a parliamentarian from the Prime Minister’s home constituency. He chased me from city to city when the Supreme Court took my case away from him. He denied me the right to a single defence witness. He wrote the order convicting me before the trial was over. I have evidence that he discussed my sentence with the regime. I am prepared to prove it if the Pakistani authorities invite the United Nations Human Rights Commission to examine my allegations.

The nephew of the General who hanged my Father amidst international outrage and the unanimous recommendation of the Supreme Court was appointed to try my husband. One lawyer told me how he was called by the Judge and asked to become the prosecution lawyer. The lawyer declined citing the death sentence involved and said his conscience did not permit him to take the case. The Judge laughed and said,” If I am prepared to give the death sentence, why are you not prepared to argue it”.

I shiver as I  recount the nightmare that my party, family and I have been subjected to even as the world celebrated the triumph of democracy in the twilight of the twentieth century.

Women hater judges were lined up against us. Bigot judges with gender, political and theocratic bias against us. This same judge was the one who refused help when a woman was killed by her family in the name of male honour.

Another Judge trying me was so biased against women that the Pakistan Human Rights Commission had complained about him. And here he was trying me even though he believed that women had no right to work.

An attempt was made to poison my husband by puncturing his toothpaste. When my husband made a judicial complaint, the complaint went uninvestigated.

A junior police officer was promoted to Inspector General Police and sent to kidnap my husband from prison on a weekend when the courts were shut. My husband was taken from judicial custody in violation of court orders. He was tortured and threatened that he would be killed if he did not implicate me, his wife. He was told that they could murder him and call it suicide. Three court orders ordering my husband transferred back to jail were ignored by the all-powerful executive.

Ultimately my husband’s life was saved by a hair’s breadth by the cumulative efforts of the judiciary, the diplomats, the Governor and a General. A judicial inquiry later determined that his injuries were not self-inflicted.

Distinguished Guests,

The concept of a public trial is rooted in the public judging judgments given by judges.

In England, it is inconceivable that a person convicted by a court of law could be elected to parliament. 

Pakistan is the opposite indicating public perception that the judicial system is politicized.

Judges can be pressured for none can protect them if they take on the state.

However, the public has refused to be pressured by motivated judgments in giving up support to popular leaders.

It is to deceive the public that trials have been conducted in camera in jail or through restricted trials. In restricted trials five or six press persons are assigned the beat. The lawyers, intelligence and a few close aides of the defendants are permitted entry. The proceedings are largely shrouded in secrecy. 

Huge police contingents with face and body plated with armor, guns and batons in hand with tear gas cylinders available would lay siege to the courtrooms. We had to cross three armed checkpoints to allow ourselves entry. Those seeking to enter with us would be beaten and left bleeding within earshot of the judges. The show of force was to intimidate our lawyers, the judges and us. 

Once I was banned entry to my own hearing. Another time, elected Parliamentarians were banned entry. Elected President of a Bar Association was beaten until his back bled. When we finally persuaded the judge that he was entitled to enter as an officer of the court, the official showed his bruised and injured back. Instead of scolding the police, the judge admonished him for coming.

During our trials, our lawyers were kidnapped, banned from traveling, imprisoned, their families received threatening calls and they were intimidated in different ways. Many top lawyers refused to take our case. 

I have great praise for the International Parliamentary Union, the Pakistan Human Rights Organisation, for Mr. Fernandes of the International Bar Association and for the United Nations special Rapporteur for Judges and the Judiciary. They were the few organizations that were prepared to listen to our complaints in the early days. 

I have been so inspired by the concept of the Special Rapporteur on Judges and the Judiciary, that I would like to recommend to the Commonwealth, and the South Asia SAARC to consider establishing similar Rapporteurs to examine complaints of judicial impropriety and judicially backed perversion of justice. 

For the time being, the UN Rapporteur can only visit a country after the government gives permission. This could change.

The Generals have packed the courts with politically motivated appointees. They can go on to destabilize democracy even after the military goes back to the barracks.

The Pakistani Human Rights Commissions and the elected Bar Associations can suggest how judicial appointments by the military can be scrutinized. The political parties can jointly back such a scrutiny. In doing so, the long shadow of the Generals through the judicial institution can be prevented. 

Distinguished Listeners.

Europe has a European Court of Justice. An aggrieved citizen can approach the European Court of Justice. 

Asia, particularly South Asia, can consider adopting the European example.

But for that to happen, South Asians need to deal with the ghosts of the past that haunt peace in the present. 

For too long, South Asia countries have drawn lines in hatred and blood. Our inability to manage conflicts has led to wars, arms build-ups and stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Even as we draw up huge arsenals meant to protect us against each other, even as we demonize each other, we neglect the human needs of our citizens. Vast numbers of our people live on the margins, without proper nourishment, clean water, health or educational facililities or due process. Our concept of greatness is tied to a bygone age rooted in military might. 

Even as we build weapons of mass destruction, hundreds of our people commit suicide because they can no longer afford to live.

During the Cold War, superpowers rivalry subsidized our quest for such greatness. Now that the New World Order has begun, we extort our people for money to subsidize the machinery built in the hey day of the Cold War.

By so doing, Islamabad has bled the economy and given birth to a frightening implosion. An implosion that could lead to fundamentalist takeover and the nightmare scenario of nuclear weapons in the hands of extremists and their politics of hatred.

As a South Asian, I am worry when I see our efforts diverted to warmongering and weaponisation even as large sections of our people live in hunger and squalor. 

My Party, too, was a prisoner of the precedent of power. It has taken a decade, and a threat to our very existence, to appreciate that the world has changed. The days of conquest heralded by the Caesars and Chengiz Khan of Napoleon and others has given way.

Greatness in the third millennium is determined by the ability of a nation to allow its people material and spiritual growth through a framework of peace and equal economic opportunity. 

Yes, India and Pakistan have a dispute over Kashmir. Yes, it is difficult for either to accept the solution posed by the other. But, yes, it is also incumbent upon both to manage the conflict. Too many lives have been lost. The lives of Kashmiris, Pakistanis and Indians.

The Pakistan Peoples Party and I have proposed that India, Pakistan and the Kashmiris begin negotiations for safe and open borders along the disputed line of control in Kashmir without prejudice to the position of either party.

Safe and open borders can herald a new era of peace and open up opportunities. Opportunities for all South Asians in building a community of common values based on freedom and free markets, of free travel and free trade.

Conflict management can open up opportunities, open up markets and pave the way for a South Asian Court of Justice. 

A South Asian Court of Justice will pressure host judicial systems to better performance. The very notion that a higher forum can challenge a judgment gives protection to victims of political, ethnic or gender discrimination even as it enhances the independence of the Judiciary.

Peace and a just legal system can unleash the entrepreneurial skills of our people. Imagine a market of one fifth and more of humanity. Imagine the investment that could flow and the creation of jobs. Great opportunities for your people and for mine, for both our continents and for all continents that make up our planet.

Britain has rightly spoken up for an end to the night of the Generals. There is more that can be done. 

We can do it by watching out for civilian dictators who try to crush the opposition, creating a vacuum that draws the Generals in.

Unsubstantiated corruption charges must fail to blind us to the needs of due process. 
Torture, arbitrary arrest, wrongful confiscation of property must be opposed in the absence of due process.

The previous regime exploited religion to create a new political system. Afghanistan’s Taliban system was officially praised. A proposed constitutional amendment sought subordinate of the state before one individual giving him the powers to “proscribe what is right and what is wrong” in Islam. 

Those of us, who opposed it, were called heretics. Citizens were incited to kill the heretics. 

Islam preaches peace and power to the people as agents of God. Islam has little place for dictatorship. Yet fundamentalist dictatorship was being threatened in the name of religion. 

Democracy might have triumphed in the twentieth century but the rise of illiberal regimes, as the Pakistan model shows, can pose fresh threats to freedom and human dignity. 

Friends,

A word of caution about international treaties of assistance. They can be exploited by illiberal regimes to eliminate opponents and give international legitimacy to their cruel actions. 

The international community can and should resist cooperation when a request is bathed in perversion. I speak as an early victim of an order that allows cooperation without examining the merits of the charges. That is left to the host country. We have seen how fragile the judicial systems in host countries can be. 

If a request for international assistance is based upon the use of torture and if the state has tampered with evidence, that request must be rejected. To do otherwise would be to collude with and encourage the use of torture and the perversion of justice. 

I come here to praise the British legal system that gave us refuge when all doors seemed shut. My husband, Senator Zardari judicially challenged Islamabad’s request to the Home Office under assistance treaties. Shortly before the High Court decision, the Home Office allowed us our request to be informed of the grounds of the request. For the first time we learnt the nature of the charges. To our deep shock, we found a terrible narcotics related charge had been made to malign us in the eyes of the democratic countries of Europe. 
Even more shocking, we discovered, as we investigated further at home, that the case had been fabricated on the disputed statements of persons arrested and tortured. The High Courts of Pakistan in their orders had documented torture on those tortured.
The charge had been concocted by the executive despite the refusal of the General heading the anti narcotics force to sully his hands in the murder of justice. 
This incident shows that some Generals can be better than some civilians, that rules for good and bad are neither black nor white. 
In Britain, the Mother of democracy, we found the confidence to fight back. The Home Office, in acceding to Islamabad’s request for assistance, has given us grounds for so deciding. These grounds can, and have been challenged, before British courts and so I shall say no more on that particular case.
However, I do argue that torture is inhuman and degrading; that it is often used to pervert justice and that states using torture in preparing a request must be denied assistance.
Torture was widely used to trump up charges against my Party and myself during my two stints in opposition. The extract from the Financial Times, November 12, 1999, about the kidnapping and torture of a British citizen is an illustration of what happened to scores of Pakistani citizens. I am going to read from it: 

“PAKISTAN: Expert swept up in political intrigue
By Stephen Fidler and Nancy Dunne in Washington

Richard Ashby did not expect a welcoming committee as he stepped off a British Airways jet in Islamabad on August 17 last year. The 33-year-old project finance expert was met at the foot of the aircraft steps by Pakistani federal police who took him to an unkempt private house in Islamabad for an interrogation that began a month-long ordeal.

During this time, according to Mr. Ashby’s account, his life was repeatedly threatened. He was deprived of sleep, beaten and spat upon. On one occasion, a revolver was held to his head; on another he was subjected to a game of Russian roulette. His captors described to him in terrifying detail the layout of the interior of his home in Arlington, Virginia, where he lived with his wife and daughter.

The Pakistani entity responsible for its side of the investigation was the Ehtesab, the “accountability bureau”. During his detention, Mr. Ashby said, he was taken on several occasions to see the head of the bureau, Senator Saifur Rehman. On one occasion, the senator threatened him and demanded a confession of corruption: “I want Benazir Bhutto. I want Asif Ali Zardari,” he said.

Mr. Ashby had never met Ms Bhutto or her husband. 

There, he met two former Scotland Yard detectives. The two men said they were working for the Maxima Group, a London-based detective agency. 

The detectives said they wanted to hear how bribes were paid to Benazir Bhutto and her husband. When Mr. Ashby said he had no direct knowledge of any of this, he said that one of the detectives replied: “If you know what is good for you, you will say whatever and you can get out of here.”

During his time in detention, Mr. Ashby was put under increasing pressure to admit to corruption and implicate others. 

The senator suggested Mr. Ashby’s family in the US could be in danger. He made it clear that Mr. Ashby had been tailed for months before his detention, and his house had been entered. He described the house in minute detail - the location of his daughter’s bedroom, his Toshiba television, his Sony stereo. “He knew I kept my files under the stairs,” Mr. Ashby said.

On another occasion, when Mr. Ashby refused to co-operate, the senator entered the room screaming, eyes blazing “looking like the devil”.

“He threatened to throw me in jail, torture me, beat me. He said it would cost only 30 rupees (30 pence) to get me killed,” he said. The US had launched a cruise missile attack on Afghanistan at about the same time. “He said he would blame my death on some of the Afghans floating around.”

If this could happen to a British citizen who could turn to his Embassy and Government for support, imagine what was happening to our supporters.

Given the widespread use of torture and perversion of justice to which the PPP was subjected to in the last decade, it has proposed a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the pattern of South Africa to investigate the charges and identify those responsible.

I also propose that the United Nations assist the elected Government in establishing a Judicial Commission to examine cases of judicial impropriety made against politicised members of the Bar.
That Commission is unable to give to my children the seven years they lost when their Father was held hostage to their Mother’s political career. It is unable to give back life to those who lost it, or sight, or health to those who still bleed from where they were tortured. But it can give to coming generations the assurance of safety from the brutalities meted out to others before them.
Pakistan’s Founder, Jinnah, was cognizant that the real strength of American and British democracy lay in their legal systems.

Pakistan’s inability to frame a constitution acceptable to the people and the federating units is part of the crisis. The Generals seek concentration of power through a presidential system or local authorities dependent on handouts. The provinces demand autonomy and a parliamentary form of government. 

Pakistan’s Founder proclaimed, "The constitution of Pakistan can only be framed by the people.” Half a century later that is still to be done.

Some say that there is a game of musical chairs in Pakistan where the military and the people alternate in power. Theocrats try to use the Generals to rewrite the constitution. 
This game of musical chairs between the Generals and the people has played havoc with the country. Some academics are now describing Pakistan as a failed state. 
The tide of decline can be reversed. But for that, we need to change too. 
I accept my share of responsibility. Given power in an environment, my leadership was based in part on precedent. I was wrong in following bad precedents that had become conditioned behavior. 

My appointment of a junior justice as chief of the Supreme Court was a mistake. It unleashed judicial discontent. It made the chief defensive and he turned on the government too. 
It pays little to indulge in favoritism, even if it is the pattern of the day. That’s the easy way out and its wrong.

Good intentions alone are insufficient. The means must justify the ends. 

Tolerance poses its own challenge in Pakistan. Power to interpret religion and strike down laws repugnant to it has been given the courts. 

Such power rightfully vests in Parliament. We have had our economy rocked, and investment stalled, by judgments on fiscal systems pronounced by the justices in the name of religion. 
Founder Jinnah had said, “You may belong to any religion or caste or creed—that has nothing to do with the business of the State…”

Since Jinnah left, it has become increasingly the business of the state. 
My Party lacked a constitutional majority to change patriarchal structures. That’s why I tell the people of Pakistan: Give us one real chance with a proper parliamentary majority and a government in the majority province of Punjab.

Jinnah was a liberal and our supporters are liberals too. Jinnah died too soon and those who had opposed him gained increasing power. 

Jinnah sought Partition of India on four elemental grounds: First, that Partition would allow the Hindu and Muslim communities in the Sub continent to live in peaceful coexistence; second the Muslim majority units comprising the new state would unite in a federation based on the parliamentary system; third religious tolerance would be preached; fourth, women would be emancipated.

We lost Jinnah’s dream in the game of global politics. Global politics placed Pakistan in the Western camp and India in the shadow of the Soviet Union. That put paid to peaceful co existence. 

The Iron Curtain came down and compartmentalized our planet. The Berlin Wall divided Germany. Geography and superpower game of chess made us a frontline state in the fight against communism when foreign forces invaded Afghanistan.

Strategic concerns blinded western democracies to theocrats seizing power on the backs of Generals. 

As soon as the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, western largess dried up. We democrats have a right on the West too. Our people paid in lives, bomb blasts, military dictatorship and weak civil institutions in the fight to build a new world.

There is much the West can do in helping build democracy in a country that was once its most allied ally. 

I’m arguing that the West can underwrite the cost of peace in the subcontinent by retiring off debt as it did in the Middle East.

Britain rightly wrote off debt to some of the world’s poorest countries in the twilight of the twentieth century.

I’m arguing that the debts the dictators ran up can and should be written off to show our people that politics of peace pays dividends, that confidence building in proliferation matters is rewarded and democrats that practice good governance can be tangibly appreciated by the world community in its bid to foster global values.

It was James Bryce who said, and I paraphrase, "Law is respected and supported when it is trusted as the shield of the innocents....

That shield is needed to protect democracy, human rights, provinces and the rights of the weaker segments of society, including women, children and minorities, in Pakistan.

I know of some very good judges in Pakistan. I recall Justice Arif Iqbal Bhatti who acquitted a Christian in a false case of Blasphemy. Justice Bhatti was assassinated. I can recall the name of Justice Samdani, Justice Dorab Patel, Justice Safdar Shah and so many others whose name shines in gold in the pages of history.

But “the good that men do is interred with them”, it is the evil that lives on. It is important for all of us, even as we recall the good, to determine to tackle the evil together.

And evil lurks everywhere, just as good exists everywhere. Generals, Politicians, Judges, each one of us has our share of good and bad. 

There is little point in recrimination. Life, as my Father used to say, is to precious a gift to squander in bitterness or recrimination.

I look to a future, letting go of the past. It’s the future that’s in our hands, yours and mine.
In my life of triumphs and tragedies I learnt that you don’t have to be strong or powerful to succeed. You just have to have the right ideas.

I recall a story about success that I want to share. 

One day, I got the opportunity to talk to the chief of the most powerful nation in the world. I asked him the secret of his success. He said, “Two words”. I asked what those two words could be and he said, “Right decisions”

I asked, “how do you make the right decisions” to which I got the reply, “Experience”.
I asked, “How do you get experience?”
I was told, “Wrong decisions”.

Experience is a great teacher and in this remarkable era of peace and freedom where the dignity of an individual is acknowledged, I learn from experience to play my part for my people.

I know you will play yours, for a future better than any of the yesterday’s that we have known.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen.

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