[The
lenient sentence was a victory for Mr. Gilani and the ruling Pakistan Peoples
Party, which has been locked in legal battle with the Supreme Court since
January. At issue is a letter that the court has ordered Mr. Gilani to write to
prosecutors in Switzerland,
effectively urging them to revive a dormant corruption case against his boss,
President Asif Ali Zardari.]
By Declan Walsh
Facing a courtroom packed with lawyers, cabinet ministers
and journalists, Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk issued a strongly worded verdict that
found Mr. Gilani guilty of “disobedience” toward the Supreme Court and bringing
“ridicule” on its judges.
But instead of jailing the prime minister for six months,
as the law provides, the judge imprisoned him only until the court adjourned —
an event that occurred seconds later when Mr. Gilani, by then smiling toward
his supporters, was still seated.
The courtroom drama brought an immediate sense of relief
that a feared institutional clash had at least temporarily abated. But it also
signaled that the drama was moving from the judicial into the political arena.
After the hearing, Mr. Gilani, dressed in a traditional
long coat, left the court amid a scrum of cheering supporters before speeding
off to a cabinet meeting about the crisis. Political rivals, declaring that his
moral authority had collapsed, called for his immediate resignation.
“Prime minister should immediately resign,” the opposition
leader, Nawaz Sharif, told the private television station Geo. “He should step
down without causing further crisis.”
But at a news conference hours later, the information
minister, Qamar Zaman Kaira, said the cabinet had decided there were no grounds
for resignation.
The lenient sentence was a victory for Mr. Gilani and the
ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, which has been locked in legal battle with the
Supreme Court since January. At issue is a letter that the court has ordered
Mr. Gilani to write to prosecutors in Switzerland,
effectively urging them to revive a dormant corruption case against his boss,
President Asif Ali Zardari.
Mr. Gilani has flatly refused the order, citing Mr.
Zardari’s immunity from prosecution, drawing the ire of senior judges who
viewed his stance as a brazen challenge to their authority.
But some analysts said that, after months of high-profile
hearings that drew uncompromising rhetoric from both sides, Thursday’s verdict
signaled a retreat for the court in legal terms.
“The government stared down the S.C., and it blinked,” said
Cyril Almeida, a columnist with Dawn newspaper, referring to the Supreme Court.
“If they were going to pull the trigger, they had to do it today.”
Because of the verdict, Mr. Gilani could still lose his
job. As a convict, he now faces a move to have him fired under a constitutional
provision that prohibits felons from holding public office.
But the two-stage disqualification process, which involves
the speaker of Parliament and the national Election Commission, is likely to
take at least one month and probably longer, during which time the ruling
Pakistan Peoples Party will paint Mr. Gilani as a martyr to a hawkish court.
The polarization of the high-stakes court case was in
evidence outside the courthouse after Thursday’s verdict. After Mr. Gilani
departed in his Mercedes, some supporters said he had been victimized by a
court that was quietly allied with the powerful military, which has
traditionally had a tense relationship with the Pakistan Peoples Party.
“Why is it that only the P.P.P. leadership gets convicted
by the courts?” said Nazar Muhammad Gondal, a federal minister. Iftikhar
Shahid, a lawyer and Peoples Party supporter, compared the judges to the harsh
military dictator Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq. “This is a political decision,
given under influence and not impartial,” Mr. Gondal said.
Others accused the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, of using the case
to pursue a personal grudge against Mr. Zardari, who once tried to block him
from office.
Tasneem Qureshi, a minister of state, said Mr. Gilani and
his party would chart out their strategy for dealing with the crisis at a
meeting in the president’s house on Thursday afternoon.
But for the government’s many critics outside the
courthouse, the guilty verdict was proof that the prime minister must go. “He
should resign immediately,” said Tariq Mehmood, a former leader of the lawyer’s
movement that helped oust the military leader Pervez Musharraf in 2008. “After
all, there needs to be good values in this country.”
Raja Amir Abbas, a lawyer who helped frame the original
corruption charges against Mr. Zardari, said: “The court has given him the
minimum, but he is still a convict. Today the court showed that he was
ridiculing the judiciary, so inherently he has to be disqualified.”
The turmoil comes at a tricky time for the United States Afghanistan
On Thursday, the Obama administration’s special
representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman, who is heading the
first senior American delegation to Pakistan in months, held talks with the
army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, at his headquarters in Rawalpindi.
Amid the immediate fallout from the verdict, there was
little discussion of the Swiss corruption cases at the heart of the matter. Mr.
Zardari stands accused of taking $12 million in kickbacks as part of a customs
contract awarded to a Swiss company when his wife, Benazir Bhutto,
was prime minister in the mid-1990s.
Swiss authorities charged him with money laundering, but
the case dragged on for years, only to collapse in 2007 after Mr. Musharraf,
arranged for the charges to be dropped as part of a political deal with Mr.
Zardari’s wife, Ms. Bhutto.
Two years later, in 2009, the Supreme Court declared that
deal, known as the National Reconciliation Order, illegal. Since then it has
pressed the government to write to the Swiss authorities in order to revive the
cases against Mr. Zardari.
But Swiss lawyers say that, even if the letter were
written, it is highly unlikely the corruption cases could be re-started, due to
Mr. Zardari’s presidential immunity and a 15-year statute of limitations, which
expires this year.
YOUNG AND RESTLESS STUDENTS RACE SOPHISTICATED MINI-MACHINES IN DETROIT
[Teams of three or four students compete in a variety of events. On Tuesday, the first day of competition, children assembled electric carsto climb steep ramps, make all-out speed runs and bull their way through obstacle courses. Similar tests of accuracy, endurance and speed were scheduled for Days 2 and 3.]
By Paul
Stenquist
SAE
InternationalAn unidentified student with his team’s electric racer.
The
three-day event, which concludes Thursday, is the culmination of A World in
Motion, a teacher-administered and volunteer-assisted educational
program intended to animate lessons about science, technology, engineering and
math. The program is administered by the SAE Foundation, the charitable arm of SAE International, an organization comprising
engineering professionals in the transportation industries. A number of
corporations, including Honeywell, Johnson Controls, Nissan and Toyota
In a
telephone interview, Matt Miller, director of the SAE Foundation, dispelled the
idea that students were using rubber bands and popsicle sticks.
“The
student-built vehicles are powered by electric motors on Day 1 of the
competition, balloon-fueled jet engines on Day 2 and proton-exchange-membrane
fuel cells on the third day of competition,” he said. Not your typical Matchbox
rally, then.
The
competing vehicles are constructed on site the day of the event, using only
those materials supplied in a kit. Students are briefed on rules and
procedures, but no engineering assistance is provided. Industry volunteers, who
may have previously provided classroom instruction, are enlisted as judges and
scoring officials.
Teams of
three or four students compete in a variety of events. On Tuesday, the first
day of competition, children assembled electric
carsto climb steep ramps, make all-out speed runs and bull their way
through obstacle courses. Similar tests of accuracy, endurance and speed were scheduled
for Days 2 and 3.
The
competition is open to students from across the country, with some slots
reserved for Detroit Detroit
For the
first day’s electric-car competition, each team was assigned a race lane one
meter wide and four meters long, and all practice and competition runs were
performed in that lane. The car with the fastest time was pronounced the winner
in each event.
A team from St. John
Elementary School Fenton , Mich.
Winners in
Wednesday’s jet-car competition included Clemson
Elementary School Clemson , S.C. Mich. Detroit New Delhi , India
Victors in
the fuel-cell race challenges will be determined later Thursday.
