How come Pakistan gets to force its President into a resignation under threat of impeachment?
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Sacking the chief justice of your supreme court is one way to achieve long-lasting greatness and acclaim. (Not that he’s been reinstated yet!)
And how is that seriously worse than secretly perverting your justice department and ordering (or closing your eyes to) torture?
Clinton’s impeachment was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to Bush. Not only did it neuter him in the 2000 election, it provides a firewall to his prosecution since the idea is that impeachment shouldn’t simply be political. Even though in Clinton’s case it clearly was and in Bush’s case it would not be, the powers that be have decided that it would look that way so it cannot be done. Somewhat similar is the way Republicans ram through Bush’s partisan hacks as federal judges while they were allowed to block much more non-partisan choices by Clinton.
I take your point, but Chaudhury, the chief justice, was considered about the only barrier between an overweening state as personified by Musharref, and the basic rights of people. In other words he was functionally the only supporter democracy had in Pakistan. He ended up being the only opposition government had. In the US opposition has largely been rendered ineffective, so no one it appears was willing to take on the president or justice department. Chaudhury’s popularity and the worldwide support his overthrow raised ensured that Musharref’s government could not escape censure.
Yes this is a big step forward for Pakistan. When I saw the pictures of the lawyers protesting in their formal coats last year, and getting beat down by the police, it was pretty obvious that something was going to happen. For whatever reason a purge or wide-spread state terror could not be arranged, and so we have this victory.
Just amazing news. There will still be a lot of challenges but this is a great day for Pakistan.
Well for all his faults, Dufus has not yet executed a military coup and has not dismissed the Supreme Court to prevent them disqualifying him from office. So even though impeachment is more than deserved, the situation in Pakistan is somewhat more advanced.
But the only reason it is not happening in the US is that there are simply not enough votes in the Senate to convict and probably not enough for even a majority. If Reid thought he could get 55 votes to convict he would tell Pelosi to start the machinery immediately. There is a real chance that once impeachment started that they could obtain the additional votes necessary.
It may still happen after the election if Bush follows the example of his father and gives pardons to all the aides who committed criminal acts while in office during the Xmas recess. But that would only be the prelude to a much wider ranging process that would probably end in a constitutional ammendment preventing the President issuing pardons to any of his appointees for crimes committed while in office. And there is no moral reason such a constitutional ammendment should not be retrospective.