Legal Types Smell Blood: Mursi’s And Rajapakse’s
Prof Kumar David
Legal types smell blood: Mursi’s and Rajapakse’s: Purblind Executive Presidents
Pakistan’s President Mushaaraf suffered shipwreck when he dismissed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry unconstitutionally. The mobilisation the judiciary and lawyers lit-up, roused society at large as the public, anywhere, become agitated when it fears fair dispensation of justice is imperilled. It took a year or two to get to the grill, but once the fire was ablaze, Mushaaraf was fried bacon. Last week in this column I drew attention to the publicity coup President Mursi pulled off by leadership in crafting the Gaza ceasefire, and expressed the hope that he would use the prestige to sort out Egypt’s messy internal problems. The anxieties that have pushed him into recent controversial actions are concerns that I share; but he has been brash. This folly will cost him face; already by conceding, within a week, that his decree is “only temporary”, he has been compelled to climb down. Still Mursi, unlike his local counterpart, has flexibility and sense.
No meliorating concession can be granted to the Lankan regime and the nasty slap it landed on the face of the judiciary; it’s a Machiavellian power grab to subvert the division of powers and whip the judiciary into subordination. In its folly, the regime picked the very moment when its position is at a nadir, to start the witch-hunt. I have been saying for weeks that the fourth quarter of 2012 is the turning point of Rajapakse’s fortunes, the juncture at which decline and fall commenced. The CJ-issue may not be Waterloo, the final denouement; but it is Stalingrad, the twist in the road after which it will be retreat, all the way to a shrouded bunker.
Unlike the Lankan witch-hunt, sponsored by a 113 strong lynch-mob, in fealty to an overlord who tells it when to whistle and when to whip, when to sign a blank sheet and when to mount bogus charges, in Egypt there is an ongoing struggle on the streets. The revolution is not complete; the powers behind the old regime have not been vanquished; they lurk and they threaten the gains of the revolution. The poor political acumen, of Muslim Brotherhood and secular revolutionaries alike, has split the popular movement just when unity is most needed to flush out reactionary residues.