Archive for March, 1993
The Province of Sindh
In May 1992, Sindh was in the grip of severe lawlessness. On the prompting of numerous intelligence reports about the helplessness of the Sindh Administration to prevent crime in both the urban and rural areas, the Pakistan Army brought it to the attention of the Federal Government. They feared that anarchy was around the corner. While reluctant to get involved, the Army hierarchy had concluded on the evidence at hand that no other option existed. The Federal Government mandated the Pakistan Army to restore the rule of law in the Province “at the request of the Sindh Government”.
The problems in the urban and rural areas were of completely different nature. The MQM had been formed in the urban areas of Sindh as a defence mechanism for the Mohajirs against the excesses of Sindhi ethnicity, local police, public transporters and militant gangs of other political parties, etc before its evolution as a political organisation. Essentially it adopted militancy to fight transgress from various quarters, the militants within MQM ultimately became a law unto themselves. On coming to power the MQM’s own militants resorted to bullying and intimidation, mostly against their own community. Such are conditions of anarchy created, the result was a free for all wherein the criminal elements on the fringes of political parties infiltrated the body politic itself and mixing with the militants replaced genuine political activity with criminal intent. With the police either helpless or collaborating or in a combination of both, the rule of law disappeared.
Permutations and combinations
Pakistani politics can be compared to a perverse combination of Newton’s Third Law of Motion and Rubic’s Magic Cube. The Law states, “When two opposing sides move towards a possible rapprochement, the allies of the formerly opposing sides go into Opposition to the newly reconciliatory parties”. Two years into his Prime Ministerial rule, Nawaz Sharif managed tentative moves towards a reconciliation of sorts with the Opposition. Contrary to expectations Ms Benazir seems to have picked up the ball before going off to London to have a baby, causing consternation in both the camps on both counts. PPP’s PDA allies have not taken kindly to her seeming “surrender”, the IJI, fractious even at the best of times is at a loss how best to explain “victory” to their own recalcitrant constituent parties without upsetting the delicate state of present amicability.
Two paramount issues are bedevilling Pakistanis politics in early 1993, the election to the Office of the President and the repeal (or further amendment) of the 8th Amendment. Because of a sorry history of Presidential dismissals of incumbent Prime Ministers (two in three years), the said Amendment and the elections of the impending President have been quite unnecessarily lumped together. While the incumbent may have used it in extenuating circumstances in sacking the Ms Benazir Regime, he was certainly not the author of it. In simple terms, the 8th Amendment was initiated as a social contract between a dictator and the people, validating all the actions (bona fide or malafide) of the dictator during his period of military rule. It can be equated to a sort of a ransom paid by the people of Pakistan to get their fundamental rights restored, the choice was to keep on suffering under a despotic rule without recourse of accountability. The then elected representatives of Pakistan, led by Late Gen Zia’s hand-picked PM, swallowed their democratic pride and adopted the pragmatic course. They became its first victims.