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The caretaker scorecard

The immediate period after the Presidential Proclamation dissolving the National Assembly (NA) and the consequential dismissal of the Benazir Government has been of some confusion. Toppling of a government needs meticulous planning or there are bound to be mixed signals, in his book on “How to stage a coup de etat”, Emil Luttwak states even conventional “coup de etats” must cater for a period of uncertainty and ambivalence. The subsequent need to dissolve the Provincial Assemblies could have ended up in a legal quagmire unless due process of law took in the Wattoo aberration in respect of the Punjab Assembly. While the Presidential action did exercise some haste in sending Benazir’s corrupt coterie packing, by inference that lack of planning also absolves President Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari of intrigue and conspiracy charges being laid at his doorstep by the lady who can do no wrong.

For some time now, people of all caste and creed representing a wide spectrum of opinion have not only been exhorting the President to do his constitutional duty to rid us of the odd couple that was holding this country in extra-constitutional thrall, but have also been rendering all sorts of advice as to how to apply the “coup de grace”. Now that the President has done the right thing by this nation, a whole slate of bleeding hearts are busy second-guessing his actions. No doubt this debate has been force-multiplied by some appointments among the Caretakers that could have been avoided or for that matter, better slotted. Sindh needs a complete revamp, his credibility in tatters Syed Kamaluddin Azfar must be sent out to pasture alongwith the Caretaker CM Mumtaz Bhutto, not only the original architect behind the language disturbances in 1972 that led to the ethnic Sindh-new Sindhi divide but the initiator of other controversies which strike at the heart of Pakistan’s federal character. Instead of bringing the Sindhis, old and new, together, Mumtaz Bhutto further polarises the issues. The Mohajir community does not have any confidence in him, for that matter neither do most other Pakistanis. One can live with the controversial Khwaja Tariq Rahim but in Sindh the President must not reinforce failure, he must correct the aberration of Mumtaz Bhutto’s appointment before the situation is further compounded. However, we live in a region haunted by the ghost of Chanakhya, “the enemy of an enemy is a friend”, and one can understand why the President remains apprehensive in trusting the nation’s destinies to those whom we can label as genuinely “neutral” people. As a once-upon-a-time PPP insider, he must know that the last Caretaker regime of Moeen Qureshi may have been sound on economics but while giving lot of lip-service to neutrality they were biased almost overwhelmingly towards Ms Benazir. As things stand today, the country is riven with debate as to whether elections or accountability should come first. Having seen the treasury looted and themselves beggared, no doubt the populace is baying for blood but there is nothing more important for this country than to revive the democratic process in the time period given in the Constitution. The accountability process being necessarily a long drawn out affair, the electoral process has to take precedence in order to ensure the credibility of constitutional authority and continuity thereof. By contesting the grounds for their dismissal by the President before the Supreme Court (SC), the Benazir Government may have inadvertently provided the grounds for some individual accountability to start at the apex court of the land. However, that accountability must not take precedence over the accountability at the polls, we must not give her a chance to put the electoral verdict in doubt by her non-participation. On two counts alone, any court in the world should find the former PM and her husband culpable of gross violation of the Constitution, it may also cost the odd couple a lot of friends. Benazir’s extraordinary reaction in the National Assembly to the March 20 SC judgment was broadcast a number of times by Rana Shaikh’s TV, an obnoxious and shameful harangue that poured contempt on the rule of law as well as the respected superior judiciary who have to interpret it. There has never been such gross disrespect for judiciary in the country’s history, defence of such calumny would seek to convert the rule of law into the law of the jungle.

Having poured out such contempt and venom publicly, no sane person would have tried to further publicise the aberration. Was Ms Benazir of sane mind when she displayed such shameless contempt? Or was she lowering the legal process to the Mafia Don-level that her husband was exercising in running the country. If that tape is played in Court, the SC should suo-motu not only find her guilty of contempt of court SC would be hard put not to refer her to a Medical Board to ascertain her sanity. The symptoms she has been displaying publicly are alarming even by Hitlerian standards, “those whom the Gods want to destroy, they first make them mad”. The other matter which is very open and shut is the wide-scale electronic eaves-dropping and wire-tapping to which anyone having any position to influence course of events, friend or foe, was subjected to. If anything friends and supporters of the odd couple should find it embarrassing that they did not escape such invasion of their privacy guaranteed under the Constitution. Carried out by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) run by Maj (Retd) Masood Sharif, a Petaro School classmate and appointee of Asif Zardari, it is a well-known fact that he took his orders directly from him, occasionally from Benazir also. This Masood Sharif relationship may also prove fatal on the major count of brother Murtaza Bhutto’s murder, ostensibly on the orders of Asif Zardari (AZ), as well as the subsequent clumsy cover-up attempt. And what about our friendly “liquidator”, Tariq Lodhi, why do bombs go off and people seem to die whenever he was around, first in Karachi and then in Lahore? What if he should start singing like a canary? He needs to explain a number of unexplained murders like that of STA Judge Junejo, the Landhi Jail Warden Abdul Rahim Shaikh, Takbeer’s Salahuddin, Former Judge Nizam Siddiqui, etc (“Messages, Loud and Clear”, THE NATION June 20,1996). All of them must have had different enemies, how come Asif Zardari was the only one common to all of them? We must concentrate the investigation process on the bankers without whose active collaboration it would not have been possible for Asif Zardari to reportedly spirit away more than US 2 billion from Pakistan according to conservative estimates. They remain the key to the treasure trove abroad in the accountability process. Wealth can only be in kind or cash, mostly cash. Zardari needed advice and logistics support from very sound banking brains to do the money-laundering out of Pakistan. To escape the accountability process some of the bankers have set wheels in motion so that their IOUs with their uniformed and bureaucratic contacts, serving and retired. We must employ foreign private investigation companies to trace down the money, real-estate, safe deposit boxes, etc illegally held abroad. Depending upon the FIA, etc will get us into a dead end, it will only mean that FIA personnel will personally get rich as they did when chasing down the illegal investment companies, financial cooperatives, etc. We need to go into overdrive into a no-holds barred modus operandi, too much is at stake for the poor people of this country for us to act squeamish in trying to recover ill-gotten wealth, after all the bankers are accessories to the financing of murder and terror. Not having as much to lose as their mentors, they would be more amenable to reason, applied judiciously. Having suffered in some great measure, our people are impatient for bringing the criminals to justice. No less is the mass anxiety and apprehension that unless the fabulous wealth acquired by these criminals is traced out and recovered, it will facilitate their return. In attempting to bring to justice those who have violated the due process of law at will, should we also short-circuit the due process of law? Going the wrong route to correct another wrong will not be right, it will only compound the situation.

A “Damage Control and Remedial Measures Cell” must explain to the population what is the Minimum Common Perception (MCP). While sound in his economic initiatives, Shahid Javed Burki made a major misstep by announcing closure of some DFIs, this caused a mini-run on those financial institutions. Moreover, people need to get some relief in consumer prices, raising of fuel prices may bring in some revenues for government, it will touch off another inflation spiral! Given the pluses and minuses, however, two weeks after Nov 5, 1996, the people should ask themselves the following questions, viz (1) do they feel less apprehensive about their future as individuals and families than what they felt two weeks ago? (2) do they feel that the rapid economic decline has been arrested? (3) do they feel that the rule of law will prevail in their daily lives? (4) do they feel as if an enormous burden has been lifted from their lives? If the answer is “yes” to all the aforementioned questions then the Caretakers have succeeded in bringing some much needed relief to the hard-pressed psyche of the people of Pakistan. The MCP by itself is not enough, the people of Pakistan need elections in 90 days, an election that will erase the aberration that the likes of 1993 Caretakers thrust on us. Will the 1993 Caretakers and their mentors be held accountable? Despite the missteps and confusion, the Caretaker Government’s scorecard at this stage is certainly better than the “Average” mark, nowhere near the “Above Average” level. They need to change some of their own appointees and implement the Accountability Bill in letter and spirit for the ratings to go higher than what the mass perception attributes to them presently. The people want their representatives rather than selected people to rule over them and that can only be achieved through the completion of the electoral process in the next 75 days. Despite her rhetoric, it is certainly not in the interest of Benazir that polls are held. How else can she achieve the two-fold purpose of undercutting the credibility of the President and the Caretaker Government while avoiding the censure that the people will certainly give her at the hustings? The electoral process must take precedence over everything else, on that will depend the final tally on the Caretaker scorecard.

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