The 27th Amendment, RIP!

Rawalpindi has always been the epicentre of power, but in a de facto sense. The 27th Constitutional amendment has just pushed the envelope to make it de jure, with the kindness of undoing the confusion prevalent in hybrid governance. The ‘coalition of the unwilling’, officiating at the helm on the contested premise of Form-47, has relieved the nation from the ambiguity and prefix of being a so-called democracy, and ‘lawfully’ pronounced an era of ‘constitutional autocracy.’

It seems to be a Faustian bargain as politicians at the helm went mindlessly ahead, and that too in utter haste, to sign on the dotted lines of the amendment to the Constitution. But for some, it was a leaf from Prometheus, who was made to suffer after promising empowerment to the nation. The 27th insertion has, indeed, negated the letter and spirit of the 1973 Constitution. It has literally put an end to the trinity of division of powers among the organs of the state and demolished the pillar of the judiciary.

With the courts now subservient to the executive, the bureaucracy has been ‘officially’ added with a new layer of judicial ‘Yes Sirs.’ Though for many, there is nothing to regret because the judiciary had signed on its own death warrant by being “inactive” all these years, as their dictums were thrown to the wind, and the Lords were snubbed. The tale began as the reigning jurists voluntarily gave up their suo motu powers, reneged on the muscles under Article 184(3), and thoroughly enacted a script in appeasement as and when they were called out at midnight—no tears for them from the nation, per se.

The tweaks in Article 243 are nothing more than an honest acknowledgement. Even without being transcribed into a law, the immunities, privileges, and an unquestionable modus operandi have been the order of the day. Did it make any difference? No! We were educated since our inception that the security establishment is sacrosanct and, thus, it has now ‘rightfully’ asked for its due in the canons of law. Islamabad, nonetheless, played a bravo Shakespearean episode of our era. The new catbird seat in our higher defence organisation, ‘Chief of Defence Forces’, synchronising tri-services coordination, was a fait accompli.

Our minion parliamentarians, perhaps, drank from a chalice of poison, to steer away from either a sermon of “mere azeez hamwatno…” (…my dear countrymen), or their skeletons being pulled out of the cupboard. The enthusiasm to ‘bring in the army’ to ‘keep it out’ was squarely reflected as a seasoned politician came on a wheelchair to put the Constitution on crutches.