By Faisal Shakeel

I wonder if former President General Pervez Musharraf was upset over the proceedings in the Supreme Court against the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) he had promoted. The court has scrapped the ordinance and restored all corruption cases against politicians and bureaucrats to the status they had on October 4th, 2007. And there aren’t any against General (retired) Musharraf.

I’m sure the former attorney general Malik Mohammad Qayyum must be a worried man, because the court has ordered action against him for misusing his authority to withdraw cases in Swiss courts against President Asif Ali Zardari. The ex-attorney general explained to the court that he withdrew the cases on the verbal instruction of Musharraf, but the court rejected his reasoning.

The poor soul must be cursing the day he accepted the offer to assume the office of the attorney general of Pakistan. And Musharraf must have heaved a sigh of relief for steering clear of the trouble once more.

On the previous occasion, the Supreme Court had declared the state of emergency Musharraf imposed to be unconstitutional. Musharraf emerged unscathed.

When the court took the former attorney general to task for acting beyond the mandate of his office, it’s hard to fathom why it allowed the man who shredded the sanctity of the Constitution on numerous occasions to go scot-free. He had staged a coup, occupied the office of the President, imposed a state of emergency and later fled the country.

It appears it is easy to take action against judges, politicians and bureaucrats rather than the generals who subverted the constitution. The verdict of the Supreme Court on July 31st, in which it removed more than a hundred judges for violating their oath, and the latest verdict against the NRO, certainly strengthens the impression.