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Striking Out
The Opposition put on a very public display why they have failed to unite by themselves for over two years; it took the Government of Mian Nawaz Sharif a combination of a series of blunders and mis-governance to bring the Opposition’s act together. Having staged a successful strike on Saturday 4 Sept and a moderately successful one next Saturday on 11 Sept they had nothing to show for it except for a rush of adrenaline in playing hide-and-seek with the police near the Quaid’s Mazar in Karachi. On the shaky foundations of the protest against the GST by traders they decided that they had achieved omnipotence and grandly announced that the succeeding Sunday and Monday would see a continuation of their political protest by strikes. Except for Hyderabad the result was embarrassing, bad enough for us to keep hoping that in the face of a lack of credible alternates with any sense at all if not common sense, Mian Nawaz Sharif will at the very least feel sorry for the country he rules over as a virtual monarch and decide to govern it properly as per his promise and the mandate given to him, all 16% out of a voting populace of 50 million, 6% if one takes the whole population of 130 million.
Incurable optimists like me see silver linings even in the darkest of moments. The fact that MQM had to depend upon PPP and other allied Opposition parties to embark upon a strike call in Karachi is very significant. That it completely failed on subsequent days except in District Central should be of concern to the MQM. This is the same city which lived on the word of one man and his whims. The reality that Karachi as a whole belonged to the MQM has now become the subject of myth. One has no doubt about the MQM stamp on District Central but Malir District and District South are definitely out of the MQM camp, Districts East and West being marginal at best. While Altaf Hussain’s once dominant party continues to command the greatest majority in the city, its days of total control over the city are over. With sought-after (by the law enforcement agencies) MQM stalwarts surfacing in UK at frequent intervals, one expects that the coming Altaf initiative will be meant to be detrimental to the interests of Pakistan, however one believes we should welcome this now as we are far better equipped to deal with separatism rather than the early 90s, moreover Altaf Hussain is now increasingly out of sync with the mood of the vast mass of Mohajirs who remain patriotic mainstream Pakistanis. Leadership by remote control seldom succeeds particularly when the leader lives in luxury in contrast to those whom he professes to lead. Karachi is in for interesting times if any attempt is made to turn this city hostage to the anarchy we witnessed for a decade or so at the hands of MQM militants.
The Opposition Unites
Mian Nawaz Sharif has done for the Opposition a favour the lately lamented Opposition could not do for themselves, he has united them and given them a fresh lease of life. Only the Jamaat-e-Islami remains outside “the Alliance”, determined to go solo in trying to remove the government in power. As everyone knows, only the religious parties and the regional ones like ANP and MQM have cadres that can face off administrative power in the streets. Qazi Hussain Ahmed is a good tactical leader but has a history of wrong strategic decisions and JI’s remaining aloof may mean success or failure on the part of forces inimical to the PM, particularly in stage-managing strikes in the urban cities of Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and the twin cities of Rawalpindi-Islamabad.
How has the “heavy mandate” like the one Mian Nawaz Sharif obtained in 1997 (approximately 8 million votes out of a population of 130 million, registered voters being 50 million it comes to 16% only) come to grief in less than 18 months? Why has the print media that had united to decry Ms. Benazir and support his cause now almost united against him? Why are people who believed in his sincerity now doubting even his credibility? Why are people who used to believe that with a businessmen background he was most suited to re-invigorating the economy, now shudder at such economic initiatives that have brought this country close to flirting with economic doom? Enemies of Mian Nawaz Sharif can easily do a hatchet job on him, only a person who remains a friend of his can do an objective study of his predicament and how he has single-handedly managed to bring it about. Whatever crisis the PM now faces is of his own making. One can blame the economic ills the country faces on previous governments, notably that of Ms Bhutto who in good eastern tradition let her husband Asif Zardari run riot, the fact remains that inconsistent policies and lack of real commitment has further eroded our economic infrastructure so that we now have to thank our parallel economy for remaining financially afloat.
Significant Events
As much as one admired Ms Benazir Bhutto for many leadership qualities that escape lesser beings, in the matter of corruption she has been a major disappointment. As much as one thought that the BJP ultra-nationalism militated against Pakistan, one had to concede that they at least had coalesced a political mandate to effect meaningful changes in India’s policies. For the moment both are derailed, albeit probably temporarily, but the manner of their leaving may leave behind festering wounds that may never heal.
Ms Benazir Bhutto has led the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) for over 20 years. She has effectively carried the baggage of the legacy of her father, late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had his own extreme moments, contributing significantly to the break-up of Pakistan in 1971 but then almost single-handedly consolidating the western wing as an independent entity. Giving the country a workable constitution in 1973, he emasculated it simultaneously by a number of amendments. His tinkering with the growth-oriented economy by nationalising everything in sight put us back two or three decades at a crucial time with respect to our place in the world economy. In short, he beggared us, put us in a hole that every successive government since then has put us deeper into. Maybe because of her youth, maybe because of her courage, certainly because she was educated and articulate and certainly because she had charisma, a number of us forgave her the sins of her father and looked at her as a national leader having international standing and instant name recognition. The crowning moment of her glory came when she came to Lahore in 1986. The accolades of the mass population were well deserved. Even when she went and married Asif Zardari, one gave her the benefit of the doubt. To almost anyone but Karachiites who knew him far better, Asif Zardari was a good match. The fact of the matter was that his family was in hock to the banks. A scion from a landed family fallen on hard times, one could forgive AZ his ham-handed attempts to play the rich dilettante, a playboy. Playboys have money, by the time he met up with Benazir, AZ (and his father) needed a golden goose badly to stay financially afloat. AZ wanted money alright, and tons of it, but to Benazir’s (and PPP’s) detriment he hankered after power more. After a few ham-handed attempts at petty extortion during Benazir’s first term, AZ came into his own post-1993 i.e. during her second term. As much as people say that he ran a government within a government, he actually ran the government and everyone and sundry paid homage and obeisance to him. These included politicians, industrialists, businessmen, bankers, generals and senior bureaucrats, etc, some of whom became “specialist advisors” in guiding him in milking the Pakistani cow. This was not an open secret, it was good public knowledge and anybody who denies this is a liar. Throughout this period, we gave Benazir the benefit of doubt. We were ready to believe anything but the obvious, we wanted to believe that she knew nothing of what was going on and even if she knew, she was not a willing party but was being emotionally blackmailed by her husband.
The SGS-Cotecna case has removed that doubt. However, the trial may have been conducted, whatever the antecedents of the judges and their credibility thereof, the evidence on record is damning. The fact remains Boomer Finance, an off-shore company, was owned directly/indirectly by AZ and Benazir was a recipient of funds from SGS through this conduit. No doubt she says the truth when she says the government of the day is victimizing her to remove her from politics. What is also true is that while she may fight on technical grounds, she is as guilty as her husband is, whether in all his “enterprises” one does not know but certainly SGS is a “smoking gun” she cannot escape. As PM Ms Benazir advises all those targeted by her regime to seek justice from a court of law, surely she will appeal but if the verdict goes against her in the Supreme Court (SC), will she abide by it?
Balancing the Costs
When the Indians went public with their series of nuclear blasts in May 1998, we were already in serious economic straits. This is an enduring legacy of many past governments but more recently a gift of the Bhutto-Zardari combine that ruled over us from 1993 to 1996, the Mian Nawaz Sharif regime has since been fighting a losing battle. The Indian nuclear blasts presented us with an opportunity to come out of the nuclear closet but it was quite clear that the western powers would make us pay an economic price for the luxury of exploding the bomb. Even then, we could have perhaps survived on the strength of repatriation of salaries from Pakistanis abroad but the foreign exchange freeze of May 28 simply blew us apart. In one surgical strike on ourselves we stopped the in-flow of foreign exchange and destroyed our financial credibility for the future almost irretrievably. Take for example, the innovative US Dollar Bond Scheme recently unveiled by the PM, very lucrative but few takers. Not that the in-flow from Pakistani expatriate earnings has been eliminated altogether, it continues on the basis of “Hundi” but that credit is not counted officially in the exchequer’s data, remaining a part of the parallel economy. That the country has not come apart economically is very much because we are kept afloat by the unofficial sector.
Having shot ourselves in the foot with respect to one of the major props of our foreign exchange reserves, economic sanctions imposed on us by the US and other developed nations affected us in varying degree. Thanks to Indian belligerency after their own nuclear explosions, this proforma application by the US and others did not have much enthusiasm. However, if it had not been for China to start with, and then Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait providing critical “bridge-financing” funds, we would have been bankrupt and in default, in fact we are already almost at the end of the grace period. At the same time IMF, bent on extracting its own pound of flesh, set conditions guaranteed to make the common man come out in the streets in violent protest. Such harsh terms would be unacceptable to any self-respecting government in Pakistan, caught in an economic vice, between the devil and the deep sea, we had few choices but to opt either for seeming confrontation or roll over and play dead. One may or may not agree with either Mian Nawaz Sharif or Ms Benazir, as different from each other as chalk from cheese, on any number of counts but they have one feature in common admirable in any leader, both not only have plenty of courage but on vital issues can stand their ground even to the perils of the seats — and their lives. It is only when they take up confrontation on extraneous issues less than a matter of life and death that one questions their judgement. On the core issue of routine IMF conditionalities like raising electricity tariffs, etc Mian Nawaz Sharif took the route of populism, lowering the tariffs by as much as 30%, positioning himself as a champion of the masses. This reduction was also meant to serve as a factor to stimulate the economy by lowering the price of production across the board. That premise fell apart at the altar of the greed of our industrial bosses who have not responded in kind, opting for profit-taking rather than passing on the benefit to the consumer.
Born-again Muslims
The government of Mian Nawaz Sharif recently moved a Bill in the National Assembly (NA) for the 15th Amendment to the Constitution (popularly known as CA15). Certainly the government could not have chosen a worse time to launch another initiative. On a number of major fronts, the Mian Nawaz Sharif regime has been facing disaster, starting with one certainly not of its making. It is incumbent on any government to maintain control over the tension level, each major initiative has raised apprehensions as well as the stakes, polarising society along the way at a particularly critical time in our history. Has anyone in the regime’s camp heard of such a thing as a “trial balloon?”
A number of major contributing factors encompassing decades of bad governance and malpractice went into the economic crisis that we were immersed in at the beginning of May 1998, culminating in the hands-on looting of the public exchequer during the Asif Zardari-Ms Benazir regime circa 1993-1996. Despite widespread institutionalised reforms and the putting in place of supervisory controls by Mian Nawaz Sharif’s economic team, the economy continued to deteriorate but displayed some early indicators of possible recovery. Then came May 8th and 11th and our world changed overnight. Suddenly we were under immeasurable domestic pressure to counter the Indian blasts and under severe external pressure not to go ahead with a response. As we stood between the devil and the deep sea, the Indians launched a most vicious propaganda campaign, designed to rub our noses in the dirt, to wreck the nation’s morale, “to win a war without bloodying swords,” to quote Sun Tzu. The proliferation of vitriol decided our May 28 nuclear response at Chagai, we were left with no options but to either “eat humble pie” or to “eat grass.”
Money Drain, Brain Drain
Now that the Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has come clean and conceded to what was widely known, that there are no US dollars left in the kitty, the freeze on May 28 begins to make much more sense. Having invited our expatriates abroad to send their foreign exchange earnings to Pakistan, our government used up that money to live in a life of luxury that we could ill-afford. When Shahid Javed Burki took over as Caretaker Advisor on Finance in November 1996, Ms Benazir and company had cleaned out more than US$ 7 billion during their tenure. To stay afloat the Mian Nawaz Sharif regime has probably seen through the balance, as much as US$ 2 billion of the US$ 9 billion in Foreign Currency Accounts.
1998 – Reason to Hope?
Having lived through a traumatic 1997, do we have reason to hope for a better 1998? If we continue to repeat the mistakes of the past year then 1998 will certainly be far worse. If our political leadership learns from their own mistakes as well as those committed by their predecessor PPP coalition and the Caretakers who followed them (albeit for a short period), we certainly have reason to hope. One can live on the fountain of hope, one cannot survive on hope alone. There has to be positive activism with a constant check kept both on the style and content of governance that will feed our hopes and aspirations. Given parliamentary brute majority, PML candidate Justice (Retd) Rafiq Tarar was duly elected and sworn in as President. The Courts have still to pass judgment on his alleged contempt of court. One does not see him evading disqualification, condoning his remarks may set an unhealthy precedent for the judiciary future. The PM will be far better off if the President survives only shortly otherwise he will remain a focus of controversial attention that will distract the functioning of the government to alleviate the economic sufferings of the people of Pakistan. If Justice Tarar survives as President, Pakistan will be hard put to survive Tararism.
The country desperately needs macro and micro reforms across the broad spectrum of the whole structure in Pakistan. The macro reforms must follow a comprehensive national census, the most important being, viz (1) local bodies elections (2) majority vote, run-off elections (3) proportional representation and women participation (4) direct elections (5) dovetailing education with population planning (6) smaller government (7) reducing and decentralization taxation (8) direct linkage between taxation and spending and (9) accountability/justice at grassroots level. With respect to micro-reforms, the most important are viz (1) restructuring the police station and the police (2) bringing private sector participation in all the service sectors and (3) private sector monitoring of all government functions. A myriad number of other reforms are needed but these must take precedence.
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 “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.