Politics
Good Governance Versus Populism
Good governance and populism cannot co-exist for long. History is replete with instances of (1) popular leaders failing to give good governance and (2) leaders who give good governance being hardly popular, at least during their lifetimes. While it would be too simplistic to say that popular leaders are not capable of good governance, that is only possible by leaders who are prepared to be unpopular i.e. have the ability to take tough decisions. Sher Shah Suri, who drove the Moghul Emperor Jahangir from his throne, was hardly as popular as the royal potentate he deposed, yet the short five years of reign before he died (and Jahangir was welcomed back by a fickle people as a conquering hero) is quoted as the one rule in the history of the sub-continent that is seen as the best period of South Asian administration. For that matter the two hundred years of British rule till 1947 over India was hardly populist in nature, it was tough but fair and counted as an example of good governance.
If we are to add up the “good governance” scorecard of the military regime uptil Oct 12 there are many more pluses than minuses, if we were to go back further to the days before the President started his Referendum campaign, then those pluses are far more than those visible today. The “Referendum” can be said to be the watershed of the Musharraf Regime; his rule being divided into the period “before Referendum” (BR) and “after Referendum” (AR). On the balance sheet the military regime has done extremely well BR but in public perception it has failed the acid test of credibility AR. While there were some misgivings before the elections as to supporting of favourites, a lot of people who supported Gen Musharraf wholeheartedly have been turned off AR by the goings-on of the last 9 weeks or so. The Oct 12 results dictated a PML(Q)-led coalition in the Centre, an MMA government in NWFP, Balochistan with a “pot-pourri coalition” inclusive of the PML(Q) as a senior partner and PPP-led coalition in Sindh. This master plan was scuttled by the “Fazlur Rehman spanner” that Ms Benazir threw into the works, thereafter the regime’s wise men decided that the PPP did not deserve any democratic consideration. In the process they used the “Patriots” to shoot down the PPP’s aspirations for having their man as PM, they then got carried away and put paid to any PPP hopes to making the government in Sindh. While this may be good in the short run, the compromise choice of Chief Minister, Ali Mohammad Maher, does not excite much confidence in sustaining this coalition rule for any length of time. He may well surprise us by having strength presently not visible on the surface, at the moment he is very much a “puppet on a string”.
Is There Smoke Yet?
As much as the Catholic faithful flock to the Vatican to see smoke appearing from the chimney signifying that the closetted college of cardinals had finally agreed upon the new Pope, the people of Pakistan have been anxiously looking at the skies over Islamabad for a sign that our new political messiah may have been chosen. Since our version of the College of Cardinals is the periodical Corps Commander’s Conference, should the people be looking at Rawalpindi skies? The last time smoke appeared over GHQ it was one of the stationery stores catching fire. With Ramazan less than a week away, the appearance of the PM could be subject to the disappearance of the moon. Since late night on Oct 10, the nation has been waiting anxiously for a PM, they might as well be waiting for Godot. The only person at the moment nominated as PM-to-be by any political grouping, Maulana Fazlur Rahman (by MMA), is not likely by any long shot to be PM, by the time the Nov 1 date mandated for transferring power has come around, we have just about completed the elections to the women’s reserved seats. With National Assembly now scheduled to meet on Nov 6, transfer of power is to be completed by Nov 14. The schedule given is the best time and space adjustment in the circumstances, in contrast the Brazilian President-elect Lula will have to wait two months till Jan 1, 2003 for his inauguration.
The Dust Settles, Somewhat
It is only now beginning to dawn on the people of Pakistan that despite themselves they have managed to pull off somewhat of a miracle by not even giving a “heavy” (Mian Nawaz Sharif-type) mandate (10% of the available vote) to any of the political parties. With the Election Commission reporting 40% plus of voting percentage, PML (Q) and PPP-P got almost an equal number of votes, nobody got more than 10% of votes that could be cast. Claiming a “revolution” to anyone who will listen, MMA’s vote tally amounts to a grand 4%. The number of seats does not truly reflect the reality on the ground in the “first-past-the-post-system”. The MMA constituent parties got almost the same number of votes they normally get in any general election, this time their votes were counted together in a Qazi engineered “alliance”. With the main PML split into PML (Q) and PML (N), and both PPP and ANP also split in NWFP, MMA swept them aside in close races. A low turnout in any election always helps the more organized political machine, whose rank and file is more likely to turn out to vote en masse. The anti-American factor helped solidify the MMA vote in the border areas of NWFP and Balochistan but not as overwhelmingly as given out to be. Maulana Fazlur Rehman of JUI (F) may strut his stuff as a potential PM but with less than 60 votes (including the ones reserved for women) in the National Assembly out of 340, or less than 20%, Maulana Sahib’s expectations are rather over-ambitious. At best his posturing is a bargaining position, meant to get maximum benefit for himself, his party and the alliance, MMA, and in that order. As a close ally of Ms Benazir, he managed that to his benefit in the last PPP regime.
National Consensus
Within hours of the polls closing on Oct 10, a very wrong perception of the early returns, which was indicating that the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal was sweeping the polls in NWFP and Balochistan, sent alarm bells ringing all over. Analysts took it to mean an overwhelming majority in Punjab and Sindh as well. Within minutes almost every news channel in the world was predicting a “Talibaan” government in the country, attributing this to the “wave” of anti-American feeling “rampaging” through Pakistan. As later results clarified, the “wave” was confined mostly to the western border in areas adjoining Afghanistan. Available statistics and educated analysis thereof reveals a different picture. The vote MMA garnered hardly exceeds what the alliance partners individually obtained in the 1997 Elections. There is certainly anti-American feeling, but that had very little to do with the vote, the core concerns affecting the individual voters were more earthy, food, clothing, shelter, medicine, education, transportation, access to potable water, electricity, gas, etc. An additional worry was the lack of employment, followed by corruption and law and order. Moreover the other major parties were very badly split.
Mixed Trend
According to a pre-polls survey conducted by Research & Collection Services (RCS) on behalf of THE NATION, despite winning 18-20% of the nationwide vote, the alliance of religious parties Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), was not translating this vote bank into seats. This wrong surmise was the only real casualty of the survey with respect to NWFP, MMA confounded skeptics in the Province by sweeping the polls, and doing far better in Balochistan than expected. The alliance was far more potent electorally in these two Provinces than in Punjab and Sindh. Not to say that they did not cause a couple of upsets in Sindh, particularly in Karachi where, despite controlling the Local Bodies in an election boycotted by the MQM, they were not expected to create any dents in the MQM vote bank. Other than their traditional strongholds in the mountains the MMA swept aside the liberal ANP and the PPP-P in their Peshawar valley fiefdom. The local alliance between ANP and PPP-P proved fatal for the two political parties. Only Aftab Sherpao’s faction of PPP survived this onslaught, and that only because of seat adjustment with MMA.
The MMA emergence is a great blessing in disguise for Pakistan. For the first time since 1947, the Shia-Sunni divide has been bridged, they voted for the same cause. And Iran’s model gives us hope, to stay the pace of the modern world, the Mullahs had to come into line, including the treating of women as equal to men. Things went more or less as predicted in the rest of the country, except that in Lahore, PML (Q) was routed because of the clean seat adjustments between PPP-P, PML (N) and MMA. Electorally the results in Balochistan remained as mixed as usual. The MQM lost ground very slightly in Karachi and Hyderabad but was compensated by the almost 30% increase in urban seats. By the time this goes into print, the final results will be in but these are hardly likely to be so dramatic as to change the political kaleidoscope predicted by the THE NATION’s pre-polls.
Idealism versus Pragmatism
In matters of State objective idealism always gives way to rank pragmatism. Gen Pervez Musharraf articulated his seven-point agenda within days of taking power, the vision was that of an idealist. In preparing the nation for real democracy, his solution is that of a pragmatist. And by the way there is no duality of personality here, over the past 38 years one has seen it to be in consonance with his character. Between the idealism the President embodies and the pragmatism he has adopted, the fault-line is blurred by the doctrine of necessity. In the hard world of realities and given the adverse circumstances, pragmatism is perhaps the only course that any leader of a beleaguered nation, such as ours could have adopted, not only for the sake of the nation, but being inexorably linked with the reforms he has enacted, for his own continuity. The starkest example was his swift decision in Sep 11, 2001 to abandon decades plus of foreign policy alignment to seek security for the State in a region made suddenly untenable for countries like Pakistan to continue civilized existence. Musharraf’s decision was certainly not popular, it was hugely unpopular among the masses, but in the given environment it was correct, Our heart may have been with the Taliban but it was neither logical nor right, we stepped at just the right time away from an extremism to which our masses have never subscribed to.
Roll of the Dice
Every military ruler of Pakistan has had an extended honeymoon with the US, Pervez Musharraf is no exception. Ayub Khan’s towering personality was tailor-made for the Cold War period when the US needed staunch friends in the region to counter the spread of communism. His autobiography “Friends, Not Masters” said it all. When the US imposed sanctions on both India and Pakistan because of the 1965 War, Ayub became a very disillusioned and disappointed man. Yahya Khan was tacitly encouraged on his accession to the President-ship in 1969, but it was his facilitating of Pakistan as a bridge to China (for Henry Kissinger’s historic, secret visit in July 1971) secured his position with the US. Even though the US Seventh Fleet never materialized in any Pakistan-supporting posture in the Bay of Bengal in 1971 during the Indo-Pak war as hinted by Henry Kissinger, the US dissuaded Indira Gandhi from expanding the war in the West Pakistan. Ziaul Haq was a pariah to the west when he ascended the throne for any number of reasons and remained so for the hanging of an elected PM, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in April 1979. When US President Jimmy Carter visited India, he pointedly ignored Pakistan. Thanks to the Russian misadventure in Afghanistan in late 1979, Zia became the darling of the west and Pakistan a cornerstone of US policy. It was only after Zia’s death that the US decertified Pakistan because of its suspected nuclear capability. When Pervez Musharraf countered the civilian “coup de etat” of another elected PM, Mian Nawaz Sharif, the US recognized by their diplomatic silence that the masses who thronged the streets were not registering any disapproval but were distributing sweets. In contrast to his imperial visit to India, President Clinton did make very brief whistle-stop stopover in Pakistan during his South Asian tour. And while he did not read out the riot act to his Pakistani military hosts, the US body language conveyed their muted displeasure at the state of affairs in Pakistan sans democracy. Pakistan’s hope of change of heart on a Republican taking over the White House took a nose-dive when the Bush Doctrine made it clear the US was ready to sacrifice Pakistan to gain India’s love, the US desirous that India (a la Chester Bowles May 1965 memo) be a counterweight to China in Asia.
Children of a Richer Being
Talking on the beach in the morning nowadays one can see dozens of ships in the Outer Anchorage waiting for a berth at Karachi Port, a few months ago there was no waiting time. This may be a crude measure but a sure indicator of good economic times ahead, Pakistan’s stock market not being a good barometer. Three years ago, Mian Nawaz Sharif’s regime had brought us to the verge of economic apocalypse, in his turn he had inherited a horrendous situation from his “democratically” elected predecessor, Ms Benazir Bhutto. In a period of world recession, an enormous amount of luck has combined with doggedness and hard work rather than any imagination or innovation to bring Pakistan close to economic recovery. September 11 may have brought gloom and doom to the western world, not so Pakistan. Despite a number of immediate crisis, both internal and external, we have been a net beneficiary of the atrocious event for the long term. The pace of our economic recovery before Sep 11 was painfully slow, for a short time thereafter it became very scary economically as exports dried up with thousands and thousands of confirmed orders cancelled. Slowly but surely (thanks to Uncle Musharraf’s blend of pragmatism with realpolitik about Afghanistan bringing in millions of dollars in liquid assistance and massive debt re-scheduling), we are well into a full scale recovery in the foreseeable future. Because of the threat of “money-laundering” forcing money through normal banking channels rather than “Hundi”, home remittances by Pakistani expatriates, less than a billion US dollars in 2001, may go upto US $ 3 billion in financial year 2002.
Oct 12, 1999 cast the leaders of the two “major” political parties in absolute disarray, PML (N) disintegrating politically. This military regime did not even bother declaring martial law or putting troops in the streets as a “show of force”, there being so much apathy among the masses about politicians and politics in general. Three years later the military regime have contrived the revival of the “down and out” politicians, their other “major” achievement, lies in managing something the politically astute Gen Zia contrived to avoid assiduously in a decade-plus “divide and rule” policy, possible collaboration between the two major political parties. The combined “political” genius of civilian bureaucrat Tariq Aziz and army bureaucrat Maj Gen Ihtesham Zamir (alongwith other geniuses of the unknown kind) may manage another “first”, the major political parties of Pakistan uniting against the Armed Forces, and that too when they are facing an implacable enemy deployed in full strength on our borders. That will leave the “Kings Party” with only “Kings” in the Party, a possible PPP-PML (N) Coalition government may then try to reverse in the face of the National Security Council (NSC) all the reforms that have taken place, a substantial percentage of which have been excellent Musharraf initiatives. On the other hand, crying manipulation and rigging, the major political parties may even decide to boycott the elections. For the first time in its long history of chequered military rule, the Pakistan Armed Forces will seemingly be allied with a sorry bunch having unsavoury reputation. How Fakhr Imam, Abida Hussain, Khurshid Kasuri, etc joined them is beyond imagination! We will then be in worse condition than at any time of our history since 1971, up the creek and without the credibility of the Armed Forces as the proverbial paddle to bail us out of the growing political crisis we have managed to entangle ourselves in. One had the same feeling of impending doom about the Referendum, the people voted for Musharraf in droves yet a hostile media forced a perception otherwise.
Private Security
For many years, successive governments have tried to reform the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) in Pakistan. For the past decade they have also been trying to regulate private security companies which first came into operation in Pakistan in 1984 but really started proliferating since 1986. While this government must take credit for enacting Ordinances to purpose, no individual deserves more credit than the present Federal Minister for Interior, Lt Gen (Retd) Moinuddin Haider, who broke the bureaucratic logjam and kick-started the process five years ago when he was Governor Sindh under the PML (N) regime. Credit must also go to Mr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, present Sindh Finance Minister, who in the space of one short meeting erased most of the difficulties the draft Ordinance posed for a couple of years. Private security has made a solid contribution to nation-building as a significant support to the LEAs in maintaining law and order and reducing their workload. Moreover employment has been provided to khaki collar workers who would otherwise find it difficult to get jobs once they were over their service with the Armed Forces.
In a historical sense, private security has come a full circle. In a feudal society the concept of private security has not changed in thousands of years, in today’s modern world the same principles apply. Tribal chiefs, clan chiefs, etc paid private bodyguards out of their own pockets, it is the same today. Private security as an organized commercial entity came to Pakistan in the early 80s with a Joint Venture (JV) between a Pakistani and a US company, known primarily for its Cash-in-Transit (CIT) services. Between 1984 and 1986, there was a virtual monopoly of all private security in Pakistan by this one entity. As per the law of nature, the absolute domination of one single person over private security in Pakistan faded and despite his desperate underhand efforts through use of bureaucratic influence, by 1987 other companies had started to come on-stream. Today that foreign company is history in Pakistan. The number of letters this despicable individual wrote to government agencies against his competitors was not only crass commercial malfeasance but must be a world record in character assassination.
Making the Constitution Workable
Within hours of the unanimous approval of the 1973 Constitution by the elected representatives of all the Federating units of Pakistan, “fundamental rights”, the very soul of any Constitution, was held in abeyance. If then PM Bhutto had a legitimate reason for the immediate suspension, then the Constitution was unworkable and in need of suitable amendments to make it fit for governance of the country on an equitable basis. If on the other hand, the suspension was simply to gag the opposition to Bhutto and his PPP government, then it amounted to a civilian coup de d’etat which was violative of the Constitution. Civilian or military, it does not matter, suspending fundamental rights goes against the tenets of any Constitution. Always the wily politician, Bhutto got away with something that may have been legally correct but was morally wrong. For 15 years these rights remained suspended till restored by late PM Mohammad Ali Khan Junejo, in the meantime many amendments substantially changed the character of the original document, there always being “the doctrine of necessity”. The 1973 Constitution in its purest form certainly cemented the Federation in the aftermath of 1971 but was not geared for smooth governance, suitable amendments were required. Without going into the history of the amendments made and reasons thereof, some were done in good faith in keeping with the genius of democratic environment prevailing in the country, in many cases the speed and the manner of their passing through Parliament symbolized the bad faith manifest in them.
Contrary to public opinion, the 1973 Constitution has not been overhauled and defaced as some have suggested, it has simply been made more workable. Having involved a set of proposed amendments duly crafted by the National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB), the military regime assessed the depth of the opposition and the motivation of the protest, and to their credit, the government has withdrawn almost two-thirds of the proposals. Therefore, what Gen Pervez Musharraf unveiled last Wednesday was that the National Security Council (NSC) was the bare necessity required to ensure that military interaction would cease in future in direct form and that a mechanism to gauge the issues and debate it in higher council (where the Armed Forces would have some say but not VETO powers) would be put in place. All the other amendments were under the Legal Framework Order (LFO) 2002 and were necessary to ensure that democracy would have some future on its return to Pakistan and would not be subject to intrigue and conspiracy as in the past, or repeated military intervention thereof.