The Wages of Truth
The City-State of Lahore
Whose of us in the media who have been rooting for Mian Nawaz Sharif since his first dismissal as PM in 1993 are guilty of helping the PML talk their way out of self-created controversies, turning a blind eye towards Mian Nawaz Sharif’s very deliberate extreme rightward shift towards fundamentalism which is at great variance with his moderate label and rhetoric that forms the mainstream of Islam. We have also propagated from various media pulpits that the PM holds the national interest supreme, even at his personal cost, whereas the bitter truth may well be that he stays well within the parameters of a rather myopic annunciation of democracy, of the Lahorites, by the Lahorites and for the Lahorites. For President, the PM has opted for “a clean, God fearing Muslim” to be what is very clearly an “instrument of convenience”. It is quite possible that the PM did not know of the Tarar connection to the “Ahrar” Party, opposed both to the concept of Pakistan and the Quaid-e-Azam. Possibly that is why ANP chose to be his proposer since Ahrar was allied to Congress pre-partition. The PM is now being forced to defend him instead of basking in praise at his choice, after all what does Justice Rafiq Tarar bring to the Presidency except a known loyalty to the Sharifs (particularly the eldest Sharif), a keen legal mind and an enhanced fundamentalist bent, again in keeping with the rather extreme views of the Sharif family patriarch? Not many people know that in the competition for 10 Sessions Judges, Rafiq Tarar was eleventh but that he was accommodated anyway, so much for alleged competency. The method of selection left much to be desired, almost the entire Federal Cabinet knew nothing of this darkest of dark horses till he was presented before them as a fait accompli less than 15 hours before the filing of nomination papers closed. And we call this sham a democracy? A very wrong message has been sent out to the entire country as well as to the rest of Punjab, the world beyond Model Town extends only to the other end of the Motorway, in Islamabad. Very much like Rome, Athens and Carthage, Lahore is the centre of this universe and damn the consequences to the Federation as long as the city’s inhabitants thrive and prosper. As a city-state, Lahore rules over several disparate and ethnically distinct provinces (since Governors are appointed by the Federation, should we call them Satraps?)
The Making of the President
One does not have to be clairvoyant to predict that barring a major upheaval, natural of man-made, the next President will either be a PML person or a PML nominee from one of the smaller provinces. Less than two days before the filing of nominations, the PML leadership has yet to declare the candidacy of what should have been a certainty in the minds of the PML hierarchy, given their happy position as regards the game of numbers. Being a democratic party heading a “rainbow” coalition of smaller, regional parties, one assumes the PML hierarchy is leaning over backwards to ensure that their partners do not feel left out of the decision-making process, articulating their preferences and given suitable advice as to who would make a good President. The concept of a Federation requires that the smaller provinces must play an active part in the coalescing of consensus, democracy enjoins that the voices of all the constituent units be heard and taken into account.
PML has no party leader from Balochistan for the Presidency, the only person having some credibility being Zafarullah Khan Jamali but till very lately he has not shown any great political consistency with the mainstream PML. Balochistan at least finds representation through the Deputy Chairman of the Senate and Sindh has the National Assembly (NA) Speaker’s Sarhad has nothing. Therefore, the province having the greatest claim for representation among the ruling hierarchy is Sarhad. There is a lobby that feel that the post of Speaker NA is not enough for the Sindhis and that to assuage Sindh’s qualms there should be a President from Sindh and that in return Sindh should leave the NA post for Sarhad. The factors thus taken into account in the making of the President are, viz (1) whether the potential candidate to be supported be from Sarhad or Sindh? (2) whether a credible PML nominee is available from Sarhad? And if so (3) whether it makes sense to move the NA Speaker to the Presidency and find a suitable NA Speaker from Sarhad?
The “Polish Incident”
The outrage perpetrated at the Supreme Court (SC) on Friday Nov 28, 1997 was an incident waiting to happen. For the past several weeks, tension had been mounting in the country as the government and the Supreme Court made moves and counter-moves. When the PM made an unprecedented appearance in person before the Chief Justice (CJ) in the Contempt of Court case and expressed his regrets, the normal course of events would have found a solution in his “honourable pardon”. With the framing of the charge-sheet, the only defence left to the PM for survival was the authority of the Parliament. This was readily given the form of an Amendment which gave the right of at least one appeal, assent to which was very deliberately delayed by the President. Agreed that the Amendment was flawed in some respects, if there was good faith in the Presidency the relevant clauses could have been immediately indicated for Parliament to correct and re-send to the Presidency. In the normal course a 30-day period is OK, but when the constitutional tensions were this high, was it responsible of him to do the abstinence act and sit over the issue? In fact, President Leghari has now come out, holier-than-thou, and made a vehement attack on the government in the form of a very intemperate letter to the PM. What the nation suspected for 30 days, and a lot of people knew much before that, has now been confirmed as a fact, the President has not only been a part of the conspiracy to destabilise the Nawaz Sharif Government, he has been the main perpetrator of the crisis that has brought the country to its knees. Without this behind-the-scenes manipulations, it is most unlikely that matters would have reached the stage it did, culminating in the outrage at the SC premises on Nov 28, 1997. In the “Polish incident” some innocent Germans were deliberately killed by Germans in the last week of August 1939 to make it look like the work of Polish Border Guards. This “incident” was then used by the Germany to invade Poland “to protect Germans”, thus started World War II as France and UK declared war as they had promised to do if Germany invaded Poland. Counting on the bully-boy tactics of the militant faction of the PML to rear its ugly head sooner than later, the President waited till the very condemnable and shameful fascist-type raid on the SC Building before shedding crocodile tears about “the dismal failure of your (sic Nawaz’s) administration than that provided by the shameful events of the last two days, “unquote. While the PML must certainly answer for this fascist-type incident, the President cannot be absolved of his responsibility. This was an outrage carefully choreographed, as much as a mouse is lured by cheese as bait into a trap, to show PML up to be monsters, to provide the “casus belli” for the demise of Mian Nawaz Sharif’s government. While deliberating (or dawdling) over a host of PML’s advice and Parliamentary missives for three weeks, the President came out of his hole in the Presidency like a shot once the CJ sent him his letter requesting for security from the Army and for Justice Siddiqui’s head.
The Ugly Face of Fascism
On Friday Nov 28, 1997 the Supreme Court of Pakistan Building was attacked by an unruly mob that broke through the restraining police cordon. According to reports the mob was chanting slogans and epithets against the Chief Justice (CJ) and almost reached the door of the Courtroom where he was presiding over a Contempt of Case hearing against the PM, Mian Nawaz Sharif. Inside the Courtroom the protest by the PM’s lawyers was civilized and couched in legal language, lawyers cited the decisions of the Quetta and Peshawar Benches of the Supreme Court (SC) in holding the CJ’s appointment as illegal and requested the CJ to step down till the matter was decided by a Bench comprising all Judges of the SC less the CJ.
Nobody of sane mind will condone such an incident as happened in the SC on Friday. Any courtroom in any civilized society must be treated with dignity, honour and respect, it is neutral ground whose decorum must be maintained. We can never allow street power to coerce the norms of justice, allowing street power into the vicinity of the courtroom spells doom for any civilized society. Judges are human beings and as such will react as all human beings to intimidation, whether it comes in sophisticated form or in crude fashion. However, the issue is not whether they are scared or not, the issue revolves around the sanctity of the courtroom. While protest is an acceptable part of the political process, entering Court premises in violent fashion in an uncontrolled manner is almost unheard of and violates the sanctity of the Court. What we are talking about is not a normal courtroom but of the SC itself which is the paramount place of justice in the country. The incident on Friday smacks of Fascism, closely resembling the outrages through which courts of law and judges were subjugated by Hitler in the early 30s. The storming of the SC is an unacceptable incident, one is aghast as to the display of crude street power. Is this the future for our children, that we should influence the course of justice by forcible means of mob force? If we cannot differentiate between the rough justice delivered by a mob or vigilantes and that flowing from logic and norms of society descended from a constitution, then we are doomed. We decry martial law because it envisages swift, abridged justice that does not give enough right and time for defence to the accused as available in normal courts, yet what is the force that drove this mob to break into the very symbol of justice in Pakistan and try to impose their collective will on the Supreme Court? One is ashamed that elements in the PML stooped so low as to use such bully-boy tactics. In the history of Pakistan this must be one of our blackest days, a day of infamy and regret.
The Parameters of Fairplay
Requiring the Chief Executive of any Government to appear in person in any court of law is unprecedented, not only in Pakistan. Even in the United States, President Clinton has been fighting to avoid fighting court cases while he is President, what to talk of appearing in person. There must be some legal protection for Chief Executives of Government and other important functionaries otherwise they can be kept in Court by anyone for any length of time, what this will do for governance needs no elucidation.
The PM had three options, viz (1) to apologize before the Court unconditionally (2) go half way i.e. without expressly admitting any guilt express regrets for any remarks which may have upset the judiciary or (3) fight out the case on merit. Given the circumstances and the composition of the Court (and mood thereof), he risked being sentenced on any one of the options and thus being put on course for disqualification as PM. With such an eventuality a foregone conclusion, there were many suggestions from different quarters, ranging from one extreme to the other. One must refer to Fuller as far back as 1732, to quote “natural folly is bad enough but learned folly is intolerable”. Suffice to say, many ambitious souls are looking forward to Mian Sahib coming to grief, this is an excellent opportunity to differentiate friend from foe.
Damage Control
Rip Van Winkle woke to a new world after sleeping for twenty years, this nation had to wait for 40 years since the Tamizuddin case to wake up from its extended slumber. The immediate feeling is that of euphoria, of complete freedom, the casting away of bureaucratic shackles that have suffocated this country for almost all its life span. For the foreseeable future the rule of law seems to have been restored but the subsequent dissolution of the Punjab Provincial Assembly has shown that the potential of the Evil Empire for mayhem remains alive though somewhat diminished. For the first time in four decades, the actual rulers of this country, bureaucracy and its “Republican” political allies (mainly from among the landed class) are under pressure from real democracy, not their stunted, guided version of it. The main prop in the persistence of their bluff has been the support of a usually gullible military, in the absence of that support they have been badly exposed as paper tigers at best, at worst as connivers and manipulators. The Nawaz Sharif regime does not have time to gloat over the return of fortune, they have to shift into high gear to rescue the nation from the flat spin that we are now in economically, politically and in the realm of foreign affairs. Mention must be made of the memorable photograph of the Honourable Justices walking out of the Supreme Court Chamber after delivering their historic verdict, the shortest man by far, Chief Justice Mr. Nasim Hassan Shah, seemed to be tallest among a group of men who had good reason to be walking tall. In the individual context, the stoic forbearance of Justice Shafiur Rahman in the face of a profound personal tragedy will remain a shining example in the putting of duty before self.
The PM’s tussle with the Chief Justice Loses if he wins, wins if he loses
As the only nation in the world capable of turning victory into defeat on matters of no consequence, we are constantly searching for dragons to slay and when unable to find them, we manage to invent some, convincing ourselves that every occasional windmill is that mythical monster and the gentle wind turning over the arms of the windmill is an eminent storm. The person who wrote Don Quixote had Pakistan in mind, unfortunately we are now upto our necks in a Sancho Panza-type syndrome. For those who think that the confrontation is between the executive and judiciary I have news, it is not so ! The real battle lines are drawn between two gifted but stubborn men, both with a potential to give a lot to this nation and potentially to lose more than they can give. Unfortunately, what they have put at stake are the institutions they should protect, not use them as bargaining chips in high stakes gambling with loaded dice. The institutions that the PM and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court head, respectively the executive and the judiciary, are responsibilities that they shoulder on behalf of the people of Pakistan as a trust. The believing masses are increasingly losing faith in the institutions they look upto for leading an orderly life in a world increasingly short of socio-economic facilities and long on misery and privation.
Heeding Lessons Learnt
During the years Mian Nawaz Sharif was out of office, one got the distinct impression that he was willingly embarked on a “learning curve”, that in keeping with the fundamental principles of leadership he was taking into account his own mis-steps and failures in order to benefit and not make the same mistakes again. Out in the cold from government he was an interested observer to the full range and complement of Benazir’s misdoings from which to draw lessons from for a possible future tenure of government. For any student of politics, which one should always be before becoming a full-time practitioner, the last decade provided a virtual plethora of instances of bad governance, none so potent as the misrule of the last 3 years. Has Mian Nawaz Sharif really learnt from the mistakes made or is he caught up in the strait-jacket that usually cocoons our leaders in an aura of self-delusion and despite their obvious leadership qualities, drags them into failure at governance, unfortunately at the cost of the country? Field Marshal Slim of Burma’s “Defeat into Victory” is an epic saga of the lessons he drew from his mistakes that led to his drubbing by the Japanese, the analysis of which took his 14th Army to eventual total victory. However, it is his “Unofficial History” that is recommended for every subaltern in the Army to read as an example of learning from one’s own mistakes and the reinforcing of success rather than failure, maybe it should be also made mandatory for our top political leaders before they don the mantle of high office.
National government? Don’t cry for Pakistan, Ms Benazir
Former PM Benazir Bhutto has asked that a national government composed of (or is it on the advice of?) the major political groupings, armed forces, bureaucrats, judiciary, intelligence agencies etc be formed “to save the country”. Despite opposition from her own political allies at this rather heretical and astonishing suggestion by a so-called “democrat”, she reiterated her demand the following day. Among the reasons she cited was the “Sartaj Aziz Strangulation Budget” and the adverse state of the economy, conveniently forgetting that we are in the state we are because of the despotic, corrupt rule of her husband as de facto PM. She remains predictable, every time she loses an election, she calls it a farce due to massive “rigging”, every time she finds that these charges do not find sympathy in the intelligentsia and/or reaction in the streets, she falls back to demanding a “national government”.
Ms Benazir and her husband left the country they ruled as virtual monarchs in shambles, the right royal loot and pillage being unprecedented in this region, if not in the third world. In dismissing her and forming a Caretaker “national government” pending elections, President Leghari cited a number of reasons where she ran afoul of the Constitution, among them cases of nepotism, corruption, illegal telephone tapping etc, almost all were upheld by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in turning down her plea for reinstatement of her government. In the elections that were subsequently held, her own supporters had grievance enough with her to stay at home rather than vote. This overwhelming disenchantment (and absenteeism thereof) converted the anticipated Mian Nawaz Sharif victory (of which he was robbed due to “computer rigging” post-midnight in 1993) into a virtual rout. Mian Nawaz Sharif marginally increased his vote bank, the failure of PPP voters to turn up resulted in a lop-sided landslide for him in terms of Assembly votes. While Mian Nawaz Sharif won a great triumph, the overwhelming “mandate” is not a computation of actual votes cast but a reflection of the imperfect democracy that allows anyone “first past the post” to win an Assembly seat. In the euphoria of their victory, there must be a cold, calculated analysis by PML(N) inner core and analysts of this aspect.
First 100 days, next 100 days? Business as usual
Mian Nawaz Sharif need not necessarily be faulted for the sense of disappointment being felt by his supporters in both the intelligentsia and the masses at his government’s performance during the first 100 days. Blame can be levied at us in the media for projecting him as an economic superman he was not (and on the strength of what we have seen in his second tenure is dependant more on circumstances beyond his control), blame can be levied at the public for having such high expectations when they should have been more content with a much lower threshold that equalled the sum of Sharif’s actual achievements during his first tenure and finally blame should be levied at Benazir’s government for being as bad as they were so that nothing could have been worse and anything in comparison to the previous regime would seem to be spectacular. Relative to Bhutto, Sharif’s credibility, in the economic field has been heightened of men of character, integrity and purposeful intention like Sartaj Aziz. Nawaz Sharif’s performance in the first 100 days is a mixed bag of innovation, consolidation and compromise with his excellent economic team crumbling to keep us afloat after the disaster inflicted on us by the Bhutto regime. While we are far better off than we were in early November 1996, we are far from where we expected to be six months later. Perhaps we should be content with the fact that we could have been far worse had Leghari not had the courage (and the legal recourse) to send Bhutto into temporary oblivion.