Politics
The Rainbow Coalition
A week or so into the Referendum process, the equation has changed drastically in favour of the President, the rallies to muster support having only marginally to do with it. While the process of transformation from a soldier to a soldier-politician will have created new dynamics in his personality, Pervez Musharraf will never become a politician. It is out of character for him to deliberately represent something as true when he knows it is untrue. Most politicians fail to accept something as true even when they know it to be such. On April 16 he did his best to sound political, the Press Conference only managed to reinforce his military identity. Even his apology for the more-loyal-than-king police baton charge on journalists in Faisalabad was revealing, he did not like what happened and therefore was not averse to the need for “damage control” but as the Commanding Officer he took responsibility for the action of his subordinates and was not about to throw the Punjab Governor to the wolves.
What the President has managed in the past week is very far-reaching, a decisive shift in the political landscape in Pakistan. In the 1965 Presidential race between Field Marshal Ayub Khan and Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah, 80000 Basic Democrats acted as an electoral college. In 1984, Gen Ziaul Haq used Referendum as a sleight of hand. In keeping with his character and his penchant for taking calculated risks Pervez Musharraf has opted for a far more transparent process, a mixture of 1965 and 1984 with the realities on the ground in 2002. By choosing direct universal franchise over the indirect process of an electoral college, Musharraf has pre-empted democratic protest by reaching into the very basics of democracy. And very intelligently he has put the Nazims and Naib Nazims of the Local Bodies under notice to get off the fence and be counted, using the grassroots rulers as vote musterers rather than being voters only. Everyone and his uncle knows that while the Local Bodies election were fought on a non-party basis, nearly 80% of these elected owe their existence to one party or the other. Once in power in various municipalities, the elected officials have been forced to stay with the “party-less” fiction, according to the laws availing they could be disqualified. Moreover, those who have been elected to the Local Bodies have a vested interest in keeping the system in place. Virtually a District Governor, a Nazim has authentic political power in his area, far more than any MNA/MPA had, or even a Federal/Provincial Minister. Why should he voluntarily give up the new status quo, he has far more power being elected locally than being a small cog in the nation’s capitals. The result has been nothing short of devastating.
Calculated Risk
The President’s proposal to hold a referendum seeking public opinion for remaining President after October 2002 was approved by the Cabinet and the National Security Council on April 3, 2002. Preliminary indications are that the referendum will be held on May 6, by the time this goes into the print the President will have announced the date during his address to the nation. The purpose of the exercise is to determine whether the people of Pakistan approve of the President or not, and more importantly, would they want him to continue post-October 2002? Most of the major political parties, among them PML, PPP, JI, JUI and JUP, oppose the referendum on the plea that referendums are only meant to solicit public opinion on matters of great national importance and are not to be used as an election tool. On the other hand the President’s idea has received the support of quite a few smaller parties, among them PML(Q), PTI etc.
Surely, with the past record the political parties of total mis-governance and making a hash of the nation’s affairs, General Pervez Musharraf should have no problem getting the people’s vote of confidence. Political parties in Pakistan long ago lost the trust of a majority of the people, having been given numerous opportunities in the past at governance at which they failed miserably. Now they should have no locus standi. Yet being persistent, they must cry themselves hoarse at every opportunity to justify their “democratic” existence. The proposed exercise should be in fact a unique opportunity for the people to indicate whether their confidence in the political parties has been restored? The onus of credibility acquisition should be on the political parties, that should be the real referendum. If it were left to me, instead of asking whether the people want General Pervez Musharraf, the referendum would ask the question “if you think the President should not continue as President after October 2002, then vote “NO”! The political parties are proclaiming to high heaven that the President does not have the people’s support, on the contrary the masses support the political parties. As such they should have no problems in getting people to come out of their homes to vote NO, after all during general elections they usually spend a fortune from their ill-gotten gains on providing transportation, meals, etc for the voters on Election Day. If the Referendum had adopted this route, those in favour of General Pervez Musharraf would have stayed home. If the negative vote was more than 50% of the electorate that normally vote in any election ie. 36% vote in the last National Assembly Elections would mean 18% of the electorate in the Referendum, we would know the people are not with the President but with the political parties. However if “the great silent majority” voted with their feet and stayed home, we would have had confirmation that Pakistani people approve of the President. But give the President credit for not following this “negative” route when he could easily have done so. Knowing that Gen Zia’s referendum hurt the credibility of the exercise, he has the absolute courage to test the nation’s resolve by putting his own credibility on the line.
Another Outrage
The grenade attack on the Protestant International Church in the Diplomatic Enclave on Sunday last was a disaster waiting to happen, that in the prevailing security environment the law enforcement agencies did not carry out proper “threat perception” and take the necessary counter measures is a surprise. What is more surprising that the diplomatic community’s own security analysts did not see the Church and the regular Sunday gathering as a potential “vulnerable target”. Professionalism in any cadre, whether Pakistani or foreign, involves far more effort than can be put in during duty hours, security is a full-time 24 hours discipline that requires constant monitoring, collection and collation of information, analysis thereof, and pre-emptive action when and where necessary. For the most part the foreign security personnel are very professional, only the odd one stands out as the perennial bureaucrat engaged in protecting his own job at the detriment of his prime responsibility. Find out a security manager who is sarcastic, overbearing and ready to put the blame on others for his own weaknesses and you will know the person who does not know his job.
As for the terrorists who carried out the atrocity, it is now an accepted fact that cowards will always target the innocent and the vulnerable wherever, whether in Pakistan, India or even the US. A place of worship is a soft target, an ideal force-multiplier for spreading fear and panic when anarchy is the ultimate objective, killing and maiming of women and children now being a recognized terror formula. The perpetrators can be any number of individuals and organizations with hate as their creed and murder as their philosophy. The Church incident was an absolute outrage, the only way of assuaging the pain of their taking the life of innocents is to hunt down those involved, expeditiously. A terrible price has been paid by the innocents, it is a debt that can only be re-paid by taking heavy toll of the terrorists who conceived and carried out the atrocity. They can run but they must not be allowed to hide!
The Election Process
The election process is seen by the people according to their perception of things as they should be. Politicians see an October date as the end of their three years-drought in the cold, most intelligentsia see the approaching date as impending doom. There is even talk of a 1971-like situation post October 2002. The business community is somewhat ambivalent, caught between the devil and the deep sea. The Amjad-NAB was focussed on big business, the Khalid Maqbool and Munir Hafeez-NABs follow different pursuits, taking the heat off the mercantile community. Leading to the question, would big business be comfortable with the Army’s continuing governance in some form or go back to the barracks? For the broad expanse of the public the impending Elections evokes mixed reaction, people do want elected representatives, but more than that they want bread on their tables and a roof over their heads. It would be nice also to have money to pay for electricity and other utilities.
Maj Gen Rashid Qureshi denied flatly that the military regime had any preferences among politicians, so what is the trio of political amateurs led by Tariq Aziz, Principal Staff Officer to the President, upto directing political traffic? They would be well advised not to enter where angels fear to tread, history has shown that bureaucratic manipulation is a short term solution which invariably boomerangs. While the military cannot be deaf, dumb and blind about those who will guide the nation’s destiny in the years to come, especially when politicians remained deaf, not-so-dumb but blind to the travails of the country and its people in the past, instead of manipulating an “acceptable result” by getting the “like-minded” elected surreptitiously, it would be far better to create a transparent level playing field.
Media and Combating Corruption
With the technological advances of the 20th century, and those anticipated in the 21st, media has become a most potent weapon both in peace and in war. However its role as the guardians of the oppressed carries most relevance for civilization. Working without any fear or restraint a free media is the best check on excess of any kind by anyone or any entity having the potential and the inclination to inflict excess. What to talk about individuals, even nations feel the heat that the media can generate on any wrongdoing. Conversely, influence over a “free” media allows the generating of excess without undue hue and cry.
The mass media, in particular the printed press, enjoys a special status which gives them protection against conventional social policies. This freedom is a vital element a safeguard of human rights in a democratic and civil society, media autonomy must be respected and defended. The exceptional degree of autonomy carries duties and responsibilities that calls for regulation both on legal and ethical levels i.e. the media must also be accountable. It would be both sociologically and politically naive to place media outside of any social controls. Accountability can conceptually be divided into various levels and aspects, including law and ethics. The mass media is regulated by legal and financial means to a degree determined by the political balance of power prevailing in each society. And there is little that the professional and academic community can do about it, but there is an untapped potential for indirect participation in the democratic process of media accountability through media criticism. The media criticism called for is not the kind of politically motivated interest group advocacy that is well known everywhere but scientifically based description and assessment of media performance, carried out by methods of content analysis. The reasoning follows the correspondence theory of truth: comparing media coverage with extramedia data. However, truth checking can be left aside, why pay so much attention to content, especially at a time of media concentration and globalization? The mass-mediated content constitutes a strategic part of broader reasoning about freedom and accountability, and ultimately media’s role in democracy.
Roadmaps and Mr FIXITS
An objective study of the recently held Local Bodies Election will show that politics is alive and well in Pakistan. Even though the elections were meant to be a non-party exercise, for the most part party stalwarts have come to power at the District level. While it may be too early to render a profound judgement about the new system ushered in by Musharraf and party, the hard fact remains that democracy of sorts at the grassroots level is now a fact of life in Pakistan. For the first time since the creation of the country, some power will have passed into the hands of the people, at least at the local level, provided of course that the elected ones do not abrogate either their authority or responsibility, exercising their mandate without over-dependance on the bureaucrats meant to “assist” them. Only time will tell as to who will actually wield power, the local politician or their bureaucrat advisors. This trial of strength will take part in each constituency and if the democrats are generally successful there will be a future for Pakistan of course, in some rural areas there is no hope in the face of feudal for other democrats or bureaucrats. Unless the people believe that power is really in their hands and that they exercise it freely without prompting or interference, their belief in the system will evaporate and with that the broad aspirations for this country. For the moment there is confusion across the board and that is not unusual, the administrative practice of a century plus cannot be changed seamlessly in a matter of weeks. What is satisfying is that there is an ongoing struggle to correct the anomalies and the dire predictions of complete breakdown have, in the immortal words of Mark Twain, been “greatly exaggerated”.
Those political parties who remain a political force of some consequence in Pakistan have shown considerable sagacity by entering alliances of convenience wherever necessary. Having more or less swept its traditional stronghold in the interior of Sindh, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) is allied in places with its long-term nemesis Jamaat-e-Islami. But let’s not write off the other major political bloc, Pakistan Muslim League (PML), as yet. Split into two with Mian Nawaz Sharif’s ascent to power in the mid-80s, it has again split in two after he and his family’s departure to Saudi Arabia. An amalgam of heterogeneous forces having no relevance whatsoever except lip-service to the ideology of the founder of the country, and buffeted by this military regime, the PML (split) still remains a potent political machine. Among the two major regional parties, Awami National Party (ANP) has shown its strength in its traditional vote getting areas but the Muttahida Qaumi Mahaz (MQM) has lost out big by its surprising decision to stay out of Local Bodies elections, giving the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) a windfall by allowing them to move into the political vacuum after 15 years out in the cold in Karachi. Given a chance to do good for the people, and it is true that of all the parties the JI representatives are best motivated and equipped to make that sincere and honest effort at good governance, they will have to be really bad managers to blow this chance. MQM is in real danger of being marginalised by the bitterness of its exiled leader, their effort for rapprochement with ethnic Sindhis at the cost of the integrity of Pakistan has barely made headway. The Mohajir is a Mohajir because more than any other nationality in Pakistan, he voted with his feet for Pakistan, traversing through a trail of blood and death and despondency to come to Pakistan. Trying to undermine the two-nation theory will cut no ice with the broad mass of Mohajirs, only the extremists who have nowhere to go will remain in the field. MQM will continue to have nuisance value but Gen Babar put paid to this mass militant potential in 1985, it will take considerable repression by the military regime to build the nucleus of such an armed militia again, fortunately (1) the military rule has been extremely benign and (2) the present head of the armed forces belongs to the same constituency.
Dissolution of Credibility?
Fresh from one of the greatest peacetime successes of Pakistan’s international history and basking still in Agra’s media glow, the military regime’s exercise in devolution of power is a possible future disaster in the making. While the devolution plan by itself has very big holes in it, the electoral process at the Local Bodies level has shown that “horse trading” is alive and well in Pakistan. There is always a temptation to manipulate favourable results in any competition but “match fixing” has its limits, that manipulation took place not only under the noses of the military regime but had their fingerprints all over the place, undercuts the credibility of a generally very clean military government. To put it bluntly, anytime there is an indirect election for any post, it is not the peoples’ will but the ability of the manipulators that will always emerge triumphant. For any elected post there must always be direct elections. On the other hand, devolution down to districts is more than acceptable in the urban areas, in the rural areas Local Government rule by a Nazim below that of a Division is asking for trouble. At the District level enhanced powers for the Nazims is a plus point for the citizens in cities and towns, in the rural District areas the same powers giving to the tribal Sardars absolute legal authority over the resident citizens makes them no better than bonded slaves at his will and whim.
One cannot condemn the whole electoral process leading to self-governance at the base level out of hand. One must be fair in observing that any self-rule is better than bureaucratic control. As such on a pro-rata basis, the “Naqvi model” of basic democracy that will come into effect on August 14, 2001 will certainly be better than what we have been suffering for the last 54 years under a very prejudiced and biased bureaucratic control. Whether democratic or military rule, the people of Pakistan have lived with only a semblance of freedom, bureaucracy remaining in actual power while giving lip-service to whoever were the rulers supposedly exercising power.
The Media Success Story
The Agra Summit had not even finished when the Indians launched a full scale analysis of what had gone wrong with their set gameplan to expose Pervez Musharraf the military dictator as a showcase of autocracy in sharp contrast to the relative freedom enjoyed by the world’s “largest democracy”. In New Delhi on the way to the Summit at Agra, Musharraf succeeded in one short day in becoming a media darling in the eyes of the Indian public in contrast to his Kargil-monster painted image. Belatedly the Indians woke up to the fact that things were not going according to script. While 15 July was a relative lull, they pounced on the now famous breakfast meeting on 16 July with Indian editors/publishers as a blatant Pakistan ploy to pressurize India by conducting diplomacy through the media. Short shrift was given to the fact that it was not any Pakistani devious plan but a Pranoy Roy initiative to air the breakfast meeting on Star TV, and that the other Indian TV Stations just picked it up so as not to remain behind. The Indians conveniently also forgot that it was Sushma Swaraj who had gone on a fishing expedition a day earlier with depth charges meant to scuttle the peace process. Much was made of Secretary Information Anwar Mahmood’s public disclaimer about Sushma’s claims that there were no discussions about Kashmir at Agra in the one-on-one between President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee.
While preparing a set-piece battleground for complete diplomatic and media victory, India had not counted on the rebellious nature of the Pakistani print media which fights each other and the government in power at all times but invariably come together in a time of crisis (or on hostile territory) behind whoever is the ruler. Agra was a Pervez Musharraf success story, he won the media war hands down. He was ably supported by a galaxy of media personalities from Pakistan, for once Pakistan came away from an important international event with the sweet smell of success. This success can be laid squarely on the military regime’s free media policy. It seems India badly miscalculated that the Pakistan print media would badmouth an unelected President of a military regime and embarrass him no end in a foreign land on international primetime. They did not count on the solid support he had painstakingly generated by the biggest gamble of all, he took a calculated risk in conceivably being the only military regime in history to have a free media. What he got back in return is a grudging legitimacy normally denied to military rulers. By the time the Indians realized they had badly miscalculated and belatedly attempted damage control, Pakistan’s media was ruling the Indian airwaves. One must commend the freedom and sophistication of the Indian electronic media, their potential is nothing short of tremendous. This freedom was used to maximum effect by Pakistani print media-persons, who in turn benefit from being far freer than India’s print media.
Vigilante Justice
Rome came into its own during 1st Century BC as the capital of a vast empire. The loot and plunder from countless cities and towns went towards making grandiose public buildings and theatres. Even as the lifestyle of the Roman rich became more opulent, life for the poor became more oppressive. Thousands headed for Rome, as much as 500,000 lived on free grain at one time. Confined to narrow alleys and the dirt and squalor of extreme poverty, anarchy prevailed. Having disposed of his co-ruler Marc Antony (and with him Cleopatra), to maintain law and order the nephew (and adopted son) of Julius Caesar, Augustus, created a corps of fire-fighters. They had a secondary task of keeping “vigil” to prevent crime, helping the Praetorian Guard on an “as required” basis. Called “vigils”, they were the forerunner of the self-appointed “Vigilance Committees” in the US in the nineteenth century, keeping a very public eye over wrongdoing. “Vigilantes” is a term normally used for those citizens who take law in their own hands and mete out crude justice, targeting mainly those who have the influence and money to escape the clutches of justice.
Vigilantes ruled supreme in Argentina for a number of years in the 60s and 70s, killing criminals and the corrupt in the judiciary and law enforcement alike, not to mention corrupt bureaucrats, crooked businessmen, anybody amassing inordinate wealth, etc. A movement from a small village called Nagalbari spread in the 60s in India throughout the East and South East as the “Naxalite” movement. Naxalites even today remain a potent force to contend with in some Indian States. Vigilantes may come from law enforcement agencies (LEAs) and/or from the public, those who are frustrated by the injustice of a corrupt judicial system and/or the procedural delays because of lacunas in the law and/or the system being overwhelmed by numerous cases and want to bring criminals to justice. Frustrations can be contained in a society where the intent of rendering justice is sincere, but if the whole system is corrupt and the justice meted out is unjust and unfair, frustration boils over, forcing those seeking justice to take law into their own hands. Many times the target is the person who sits on judgement. One can describe individual crime to an extent, how should one classify the individual who murders out of vengeance rather than murders out of profit (or even sheer lunacy)?
Clearing NAB’s Webs
Brilliant Aitzaz Ahsan will go down in legal history as truly one of the outstanding practitioners of law in Pakistan. Shoring up his remarkable legal acumen by painstaking research carried out along with his legal aides much before he enters a courtroom, his presentation is incisive and analytical, delivered in a voice that is hardly ever raised, bass in content rather than treble. Having no time for histrionics, the calm demeanour and attitude reflects an inner confidence impressing friends and foes alike. A tremendous asset to the PPP, not only a credible, seasoned politician but an effective, functioning lawyer, his submissions before the Supreme Court (SC) recently about the provisions of the extremely draconian National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Ordinance were concise and logical. Senior legal counsel representing other clients were no less in stature, among them Akram Shaikh, Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, Basit Ali, etc. To hold one’s own among such talent is impressive by itself, to stand out among this gathering of legal eagles is remarkable.
Despite agreeing with many of Aitzaz’s legal submissions (and those of the others) the SC detailed 372 page judgment did not find NABO ultra virus of the Constitution. Chief Justice Irshad Hassan Khan is a genuine Solomonic surprise, his well-thought out and pragmatic legal presentations is doing much to mend the tattered reputation (audio-tapes, etc) of the superior judiciary, case by case, a slow but deliberate process. The balanced judgements are rebuilding the confidence of not only the Pakistani populace but interested foreign observers as to the fairness of the judicial state of the nation.