A Bridge Called Confidence
With the death of Gen Ziaul Haq in August 1988, a decade plus of dictatorial rule came to an end. Before his death, the late President had dismissed the man handpicked by him to guide his version of partyless democracy, the “crime” of late Mr. Junejo had been to display signs of independence as Prime Minister. Gen Zia’s fears had been fed by the Establishment that had decided that Junejo was about to cross the fail-safe line of total control and needed to be cut to size. The enquiry into the Ojhri Camp disaster acted as the proverbial straw. Prominent advisors to Gen Zia were the Establishment figures Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Dr Mahbubul Haq, Roedad Khan, Ijlal Haider Zaidi, Mahmoud Haroon, etc. When the then VCOAS, Gen Aslam Beg, decided against the usual route to the Presidency and opted that the country go for the constitutional process, this was God-sent as it suited the Establishment and their chief, GIK, became President. With Ms Benazir Bhutto’s PPP running rampant politically, the IJI, the Islamic Democratic Front, was cobbled together around the ever available Pakistan Muslim League. PML leader Junejo, discarded unceremoniously only a few months ago, was now again resurrected as the pointman against a bigger threat. Ms Bhutto’s electoral momentum took her to Federal power but fell short of gaining the key Province of the Punjab. As a part of the package that elevated her to PM, Ms Bhutto was forced to abandon Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan as her Presidential candidate and swallow the GIK pill as the Establishment-dictated “consensus” candidate of both the major political groupings. As much as everyone would have us believe that this was “democracy”, the fact remained that it was an Establishment-contrived farce.
Ms Bhutto’s political demise was inherent from the first day of her first Prime Ministerial stint. Given that the PPP had been out of office for a long time, the Establishment policy was to allow enough rope to PPP to run berserk with respect to nepotism and corruption. Oxford and Harvard educated Ms Benazir was simply overwhelmed by the demands and trappings of third world office, exposing her severe limitations with respect to experience. Ms Benazir was also badly served by her close advisors, these stalwarts decided they were omnipotent and started to pick on the Armed Forces. By August 1990 the Establishment had the necessary strength (power flows through the barrel of a gun) to move against her.
The PML along with its IJI component was duly “elected” to power in 1990, riding in on the antipathy to Ms Bhutto’s regime created by an orchestration of corruption and scandals as well as selected rigging, particularly in Sindh. For all its “democratic” trappings, the Muslim League was very much the surrogate of the Establishment. While Mian Nawaz Sharif was chosen as the new face to head the Government, the check and balance was provided by having Establishment loyalist Governors and Chief Ministers in all the Provinces except Punjab which was allowed to the new “Prince of Wales” as a sop. At the beginning everything went hunky-dory but as the new Prime Minister began to enjoy the trappings of his office he discovered the limitations of his authority. By this time the Establishment had turned on its original mentor in the form of the COAS, Gen Aslam Beg, eliminating him by the simple process of normal retirement, calculating that it would take the new incumbent some time to find his feet. To keep the late Gen Asif Nawaz in line, they even encouraged the new COAS to constantly look over his shoulders at “enemies”, real or imagined. While Mian Nawaz Sharif’s penchant for economic liberalism was reluctantly accepted in keeping with the times, there was grumbling within the Establishment rank and file about the gradual erosion of their authority, the monetary loss to their pockets and the emasculation of their normal lifestyle. At the same time some people of the inner circle around Nawaz Sharif started to encroach in areas considered sacred by the Establishment. By the middle of 1992, the Establishment had had enough of Mian Nawaz Sharif’s tendency to be independent. The alienation of the Mohajir community from Mian Nawaz Sharif because of Operation Clean-Up created the conditions that led to his ultimate destabilization. By late 1992, the Establishment set in motion the process called the “agenda”, this stood for the removal of the incumbent government and replacement thereof by a chastened Ms Bhutto. To accomplish this, the Establishment “spin masters” went into overdrive on a multi-track weaving of intrigues and subterfuges to destabilize the Nawaz Sharif regime.
The untimely death of the COAS, Gen Asif Nawaz Janjua, in January 1993 put the “agenda” off track. By this time, the Establishment was beginning to be apprehensive about late Gen Asif Nawaz as he was also showing increasing signs of independence as reflected by the basic impatience in his nature. This fact was force-multiplied by the civilian sycophants who had rallied around the late COAS and eulogised him as a combination of Ataturk and Ayub Khan. A handsome person with an impressive military bearing, the late Gen Asif Nawaz was a good and honest soldier but never the superior military genius he was made out to be by a well orchestrated media hoopla. While the Establishment shed crocodile tears, they heaved a sigh of relief at his demise and continued with the “agenda” which had started in November 1992 with the first “Long March”. Despite lukewarm support from the military hierarchy, the government-in-power had reacted strongly and prevented the demonstration from reaching the Capital. In crushing the political protest, the Nawaz Sharif regime did not heed the inherent danger signals in the Establishment’s tacit nod to Ms Bhutto. In the euphoria of victory the Nawaz Sharif regime became like “the wind which cannot read”, THE NATION (November, 1992). Instead of making immediate overtures to Ms Bhutto for a long-term political compromise, they chose the route of half-hearted initiatives. It is true that at the insistence of Finance Minister Senator Sartaj Aziz and Ch Nisar Ali, Minister for Petroleum and Special Assistant to the PM, the Nawaz Sharif government started to initiate confidence-building measures but it was too little too late. Without inherent trust manifest in it, the opportunity for grand reconciliation based on superior political statesmanship was lost. Even as she nursed her wounds (and actual physical ailments) Ms Bhutto decided that the only pragmatic way to dislodge Mian Nawaz Sharif’s government was to cooperate whole-heartedly with the Establishment. Matters came to a head with the defiant speech of PM Nawaz Sharif on prime time TV on April 17, 1993, a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI). Politically sensitive that she is, Ms Bhutto instinctively remarked that “today Mian Nawaz Sharif has become a politician” or words to that effect. The midnight dismissal of Nawaz Sharif as PM on April 18, 1993, his reinstatement by the Supreme Court (May 26) and the subsequent Establishment-inspired revolt of the Provinces against Federal authority leading to the resignation of both the President and PM (July 18) are the subject matter of history.
For the record, the Establishment seems to have meticulously planned (and thus been well prepared) to install a “suitable” Caretaker Administration to hold free and fair elections within 90 days. The inner circle of Mian Nawaz Sharif was led to believe that Moeenuddin Qureshi (who reached the No.2 post in the World Bank via the Pakistani bureaucracy) was actually their choice as Caretaker PM. In fact he was neither Nawaz Sharif nor Ms Bhutto’s choice, he was the Establishment nominee as the best available person to give the perception of neutrality to friend and foe alike, domestically and internationally. Except perhaps for the one solitary exception of the Punjab Caretaker CM, who was hardly calling the shots in Punjab, all other Governors, CMs, civil and police officers were either genuinely neutral, anti-Nawaz Sharif, pro-PPP or pro-PML(J). The level playing field was a carefully crafted figment of imagination orchestrated in the media based on a few populist reforms long on rhetoric but short in actual substance. All this was not done out of any love for Ms Bhutto or PPP, in fact the plan called for to giving her only a slender majority to form the Federal Government but with checks and balances in the hands of the Establishment through its new surrogates, the PML(J). Rumours of a “hung” Parliament were circulated much before the Elections. Unfortunately for the “spin masters”, Mian Nawaz Sharif did much better than was predicted by election analysts, mostly at the expense of PML(J) which was reduced to a minority party. For the first time since independence, the PML emerged as an independent democratic entity. Thus the force of circumstances has caused the emergence of two major political groupings as democratic forces without any IOUs to the Establishment.
By standing upto the Establishment’s nominees, GIK and his back-up, Balakh Sher Mazari, Ms Benazir has also declared UDI. Both the young leaders, therefore, come to the table without the excess baggage of Establishment IOUs, as the true arbiters of the nation’s destiny. Now is the time to build the bridge of confidence, to initiate trust-consolidation measures to ensure that democracy survives in Pakistan. The foundation stone of the bridge called confidence could be to agree on the best man to be the President of the country, he could be a man without allegiance to either party or he could be acceptable to the other side even if he belongs to either party. There is an element of sacrifice in building the bridge called confidence, that sacrifice calls for supreme self-confidence. Both our major leaders have an abundance of that as well as courage, it is now upto them to shake off the last vestiges of the Establishment by going in for either a consensus or a compromise.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment