Two suns in the sky?

EIGHTYTWO years ago, Woodrow Wilson took America into the 20th century with a challenge to make the world safe for democracy. President’s Musharraf’s challenge in the 21st century is to make democracy safe for Pakistan.

Pakistan opted for Parliamentary democracy after independence and declared itself to be a federal Islamic republic on April 12, 1973. Parliament is one of the chief instruments of our democracy. In England parliament is sovereign and “true it is, that what the parliament doth no authority upon earth can undo.” In short, it can do everything that is not naturally impossible.

De Lolme has summed up the matter in the grotesque expression which has now become proverbial. “It is a fundamental principle with English lawyers that parliament can do everything but make a woman a man and man a woman”.

In Pakistan the parliament is not supreme and not all that powerful either. Like the other two major institutions of government, its powers are defined and limited by the Constitution. The doctrine of legislative omnipotence finds no place in a federal system of government like ours. Our Constitution is the fundamental law of the land and has superiority over all the institutions it creates, be it the legislature, executive or judiciary. None of the institutions of government can go beyond the powers vested in them by the Constitution.

Pakistan opted for the parliamentary form of government long ago, but we have till today not resolved two basic problems which have bedevilled the growth of our democracy. These are: (1) What should be the powers of the president and the prime minister in a parliamentary form of government? and (2) What should be the role of the army, in a democratic Pakistan with a parliamentary form of government?

India framed a constitution, like ours, on the Westminster model within two years of independence and has a parliamentary form of government. All their constitutional experts including Sir Chimanlal Setalvad, Sir Krishna Swamy and others, made it abundantly clear right in the beginning that the executive responsibility for the governance of the country rests with the prime minister; the president is neither an appellate authority over the prime minister nor a supervisory authority over the prime minister or the cabinet. Doubts in regard to the precise powers of the president vis-a-vis the prime minister and the council of ministers were originally raised by India’s first president, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, who had earlier presided over the constituent assembly.

Rajendra Prasad raised three points of constitutional importance and claimed that he was not bound by the advice of the council of ministers. He contended that he had the power to withhold assent to bills in his discretion, dismiss a ministry or a minister and order a general election and as a supreme commander of the defence forces, send for the military chiefs, and ask for information about defence matters. The power, he argued, flowed from the president’s oath of office.

Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister, was taken completely by surprise and promptly sought the formal opinion of the attorney-general, M. C. Setalvad, a recognized legal colossus. Setalvad was clear in his opinion that in a parliamentary form of government, the office of the president was essentially that of a titular head like that of the British monarch. He, therefore, held that the president was bound by the advice of the council of ministers and could not withhold assent to a bill as claimed by Rajendra Prasad. At the same time, however, he was of the opinion that the president could, like a constitutional monarch, assert his influence in other ways, as spelt out by Bagehot, an acknowledged authority on British constitutional law. According to Bagehot, the Crown had “the right to be consulted, the right to warn, and the right to encourage” and nothing more.

Setalvad’s views were equally of interest on the two other issues. First, he said that the president could not send for the service chiefs but he could send for the defence minister. Setalvad further held that the president should avoid speeches which might embarrass the government. That settled the issue once and for all and that is where the matter rests today. Indian democracy has stood the test of time. The executive is accountable to the legislature and legislature alone. There is no other check on the Indian prime minister or the cabinet. The constitution has kept the country united, allowed its democracy to continue to function and gain strength and kept the armed forces at bay.

In our case, successive governments disfigured, defiled, defaced, decimated and destroyed the basic features of our Constitution with the help of a pliant judiciary. We deviated from the principles of parliamentary form of government, gave vast powers to the president, including power to appoint service chiefs, governors, power to dissolve the National Assembly and power to supervise and oversee the working of the government. This, inevitably, led to trouble which persists till today.

Is it consistent with the principles of parliamentary government to empower the president at the expense of the prime minister? And is it consistent with the principles of parliamentary democracy to divest the parliament of its constitutional role as the sole check on the executive and pass on this function to an unelected, extra-constitutional body like the National Security Council dominated by the armed forces?

The irony is that in spite of all the battering it has received, the Constitution, which is now almost unrecognizable, is still described as the 1973 Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. It is, like in ancient times when the emperor would test his ministers and courtiers by bringing out a donkey and calling it a horse. If you maintained that it was a donkey, you lost your head. If you called it a horse, then you got a promotion.

It is axiomatic that the army has no political role in any democratic country, whatever its form of government. But, for historical reasons, it has acquired this role in Pakistan which now appears to be irreversible. The only question for consideration, therefore, is: should this role be formalized through the NSC and made a part of the Constitution or should it be left as it is?

In my opinion, the army should be like an emergency lamp. When power fails — and power fails quite frequently in Islamabad — the emergency lamp comes into operation. When power is restored, the emergency lamp becomes dormant. Or to put it in another way, the role of the army should be like that of a fire brigade. It should rush to the site of fire, extinguish the fire as quickly as possible, and then get back to the station. It must not stay at the site of the fire a minute longer than is absolutely necessary. If it lingers on, tarries too long, gets involved in the management and administration of the house, it ceases to be a fire brigade.

The chief of army staff should, like the emergency lamp, remain in the background. If strain develops between the president and the prime minister and the country faces what is called the “deadlock of democracy”, he should act as a referee, avoid becoming a participant or a partisan in the political power game and act as a peacemaker and peacekeeper without derailing the political process. In course of time, this arrangement will, hopefully, develop into a healthy convention and become a source of strength and stability for Pakistan’s democracy.

On the other hand, if the army’s role in politics is formalized, as is proposed, it will expose it to criticism both at home and abroad. It will be accused of exercising power without responsibility and of usurpation of the functions of parliament and of Bonapartism. The centre of gravity, the locus of ultimate power, will shift to the National Security Council, an unelected body dominated by armed forces answerable to none. It will result in constitutional anarchy because the proposed National Security Council is foreign to the parliamentary form of government and is inconsistent with the supremacy of the Constitution and the role of parliament as the “great inquest” of the nation.

There can’t be two suns in the sky. There should be one authority in any government, in any state, in any country. There can’t be a second centre of power in a parliamentary system of government. If you create a second centre of power, conflict between the two will develop and confusion and chaos will follow.

“I think you listen too much to the soldiers”, Lords Salisbury wrote to Lytton, viceroy of India. “No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologian, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense”.

I recalled Salisbury’s words of advice when I left the chief executive’s office after five hours of free, frank and open discussion with President Musharraf on the constitutional package. Contrary to popular belief, President Musharraf is a good listener, enjoys the cut and thrust of argument and is still open to conviction. What he needs more than anything else is civilian input.

Solving the unsolvable

THIS is not the first time that Srinagar and New Delhi will be talking over the quantum of accession. Some 40 years ago the same exercise was done. Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah had been released after a decade of internment. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had realized the mistake of having detained him after his statements conveying that Kashmir was not a bonded slave of India.

Nehru’s interlocutor was Lal Bahadur Shastri. The Sheikh’s associate was Mirza Afzal Beg, a Kashmiri with vast legal and constitutional background. The talking point was the fallout from the instrument of accession which the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir had signed to integrate the state with the Indian Union after the British had left. This instrument had given New Delhi only three subjects: defence, foreign affairs and communications.

After the detention of the Sheikh in 1953, the whole concept of autonomy underwent a change. New Delhi got pushed beyond the three subjects. Many laws were “enacted” by the pliable state assemblies. The Sheikh questioned the basis of all such laws and wanted them withdrawn.

Shastri, the Sheikh and Beg would talk almost every day on this subject. I was then Shastri’s information officer. The press briefings were dull because there was no real information to communicate except that the three had met. After a few days, the newspapers stopped carrying even that bit.

I would often inquire from Shastri what they were discussing. He would reply, “Practically nothing.” They went over again and again which laws were enacted in the state or extended to it when the Sheikh was under detention. To verify whether they were outside the three subjects — defence, foreign affairs and communications — the Sheikh’s repeated question was how New Delhi had come to extend certain central laws to Jammu and Kashmir when it had no authority to do so. Shastri was on the defensive.

“What is in the mind of the Sheikh?” I once asked Shastri privately. First he hesitated a bit, then said that the Sheikh was for independence. Reports in the fifties were that the concept of independence was something which Adlai Stevenson, who once contested the US presidential election, had sold to the Sheikh at Srinagar when the two met. The talks between Shastri and the Sheikh were suspended when the latter visited Pakistan. Nehru’s idea was to associate Pakistan with a final solution. Sheikh did not talk about independence to General Ayub Khan, then martial law administrator, as the records say. But the Sheikh reportedly proposed a condominium or confederation. Ayub rejected both the proposals. Nehru died suddenly in 1964 and Shastri in 1966. This ended the Sheikh’s dream.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi picked up the thread in the beginning of the seventies. G.P. Parthasarathy, a senior bureaucrat whom she used often for important talks, was the interlocutor. By then East Pakistan had seceded from Pakistan to become independent Bangladesh.

During his discussions with Parthasarathy, the Shiekh was in a chastened mood. He dropped the title of prime minister for the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir. He accepted many laws which the centre had extended to the state “with its permission.”

They went beyond the three subjects — defence, foreign affairs and communications. What is known as the Indira-Sheikh accord was reached and Kashmir could review central laws extended to the state. It was not the autonomy of the 1953 status but it gave Jammu and Kashmir a visible identity. The Sheikh did realize that he did not have the pull which he had once at the centre. The matter was left at that.

Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and his son Omar Abdullah, the National Conference president, are legally correct in their contention that the state ceded to India only three subjects. But when the Sheikh, the person who was mainly responsible for accession to India, himself agreed to rules and regulations beyond the three subjects, how can his successors reopen the whole thing and reject the changes the Sheikh had concurred with?

The threat by Omar Abdullah that New Delhi should either accept the 1953 status or face the Hurriyat’s independence does not create any ripples. If he can reconcile himself to his presence in the BJP-led government even after the Gujarat carnage, he can also water down his demands.

He should learn from his father that riding two horses at the same time is politically possible, if not morally.

The 1953 autonomy is certainly a possibility. But it can’t happen until the rest of India is convinced that after the 1953 autonomy status there will be no problem called Kashmir.

Both Hurriyat and Pakistan have to understand this. They have to be brought round — may be America and the UK can do so.

My fear is that the RSS, whose parivar includes the BJP, has already made up its mind. It has proposed the trifurcation of the state because it has come to believe that the 1953 status will not be the final solution, acceptable either to the Muslim-majority valley of Kashmir or Pakistan. It is a communal approach. But the RSS is not associated with anything else. It thinks that the Hindu-majority Jammu and the Buddhist-majority Ladakh must be “saved.”

Unfortunately, Kashmiriyat, a secular pull, has weakened in the state over the years. Terrorists have played havoc with it. They have communalized the movement, which was once for a democratic, secular state. Their planned killing of Hindus and Sikhs has contaminated Kashmir. Whether it was Qasim Nagar a few days earlier or Kala Chat two months ago, their target was one religious community.

Jammu is a Hindu majority region which has largely stayed away from the movements in the valley. Its problems with Srinagar are many but it has been part and parcel of a secular democratic structure. The exit of Kashmiri pandits gave the state a jolt but it was able to hold together. The climate is changing now. The killing by the terrorists and the propaganda for trifurcation are too much for Kashmiriyat.

On top of it some in the Hurriyat do not believe in the concept of pluralism. And the Pakistan establishment has seldom shirked from playing a communal card.

Islamabad may have stopped infiltration but the damage it has done to itself and India in supporting religious and jihadi elements is irreparable. A new mood has come to prevail, that of fundamentalism.

It is a Frankenstein’s monster and it is now eating up Pakistan. It also has an adverse effect on India’s pluralistic society. Muslims are bearing the brunt. This suits the Hindutva forces. They can spread their hate-Muslim policy more effectively.

The Muslim community is not getting its due politically, economically or socially. Less than three per cent of Muslims have employment in government. The representation in state assemblies and parliament is also low, not proportional to the 15 per cent population.

And when a carnage like the one in Gujarat gets pushed into the background without the guilty being punished, the secular character of India becomes a bigger question mark.

Even then a Muslim has been elected president of India. Two Muslims made the country proud when India beat England in the NatWest Trophy cricket final at Lord’s.

Another Muslim produced a film, Lagaan, which reached the highest slot by getting nominated for an Oscar. Such instances sustain hopes that despite the efforts to Hinduize society, the minority community is not disheartened and is with the majority in wanting to take India to the pinnacle of glory.

The writer is a freelance columnist based in New Delhi.

A start in healing wounds

THE Irish Republican Army’s long campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland killed civilians carelessly if not deliberately. It was certainly a walk along a path that could have led to hate-filled suicide bombers.

The IRA, however, took a significant step in the right direction this week with its “sincere apologies and condolences” to civilian victims and their families. It was a much-needed moment of optimism for peace.

Several years ago, the leader of the IRA’s political wing, Gerry Adams, apologized for one act, the 1987 Enniskillen bombing that killed 11 people, but the new apology is the IRA’s first broad statement of remorse.

The timing was significant, five days before the anniversary of Bloody Friday, an infamous day in 1972 when the IRA detonated dozens of bombs, killing nine people and injuring hundreds. The death toll on both sides during the decades of strife is about 3,600. Some critics took issue with the scope of the IRA apology, which included only noncombatants, contending that it should have been broader. Many unionists dismissed the IRA statement as too little, too late.

It is true that the IRA has more to do. It has begun decommissioning weapons and should continue, at a faster pace. The IRA leadership also should come clean regarding its links to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the narco-terrorist guerillas. It has yet to explain what three IRA operatives jailed in Colombia were doing in guerrilla-controlled territory.

In its statement, however, the IRA’s words seem unequivocal: “We remain totally committed to the peace process and to dealing with the challenges and difficulties which this presents.”—Los Angeles Times

Power of the Jewish lobby

[The following is the concluding part of Robert Fisk’s article, “A strange kind of freedom”, which appeared in this space in yeserday’s issue.]

AS Uri Avnery, the leader of Gush Shalom, the most courageous Israeli peace group, pointed out in a typically ferocious essay last month, there is a darker side to the alliance. “According to its [Christian Zionist] theological beliefs, the Jews must congregate in Palestine and establish a Jewish state on all its territory” — an idea that would obviously appeal to Ariel Sharon — “so as to make the Second Coming of Jesus Christ possible.”

The power of the Israeli lobby in the United States is debated far more freely in the Israeli press than in American newspapers or on US television. There is, of course, a fine and dangerous line between justified investigation — and condemnation — of the lobby’s power, and the racist Arab claim that a small cabal of Zionists run the world. Those in America who share the latter view include a deeply unpleasant organization just along the coast from San Francisco at Newport Beach known as the “Institute for Historical Research”.

The Israeli lobby’s influence over the US Congress and Senate calls into question the degree to which the American legislature has been corrupted by lobby groups. It is to an Israeli voice — Avnery again — that Americans have to turn to hear just how mighty the lobby has become. “Its electoral and financial power casts a long shadow over both houses of the Congress,” Avnery writes. “Hundreds of Senators and Congressmen were elected with the help of Jewish contributions. Resistance to the directives of the Jewish lobby is political suicide. If the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) were to table a resolution abolishing the Ten Commandments, 80 Senators and 300 Congressmen would sign it at once. This lobby frightens the media, too, and assures their adherence to Israel.”

Avnery could have looked no further than the Democratic primary in Alabama last month for proof of his assertion. Earl Hilliard, the five-term incumbent, had committed the one mortal sin of any American politician: he had expressed sympathy for the cause of the Palestinians. He had also visited Libya several years ago. Hilliard’s opponent, Arthur Davis, turned into an outspoken supporter of Israel and raised large amounts of money from the Jewish community, both in Alabama and nationwide.

The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz noted that among the names of the first list of contributors to Davis’s campaign funds were “10 Cohens from New York and New Jersey, but before one gets to the Cohens, there were Abrams, Ackerman, Adler, Amir, Asher, Baruch, Basok, Berger, Berman, Bergman, Bernstein and Blumenthal. All from the East Coast, Chicago and Los Angeles. It’s highly unlikely any of them have ever visited Alabama...”

The Jewish newspaper Forward — essential reading for any serious understanding of the American Jewish community — quoted a Jewish political activist following the race: “Hilliard has been a problem in his votes and with guys like that, when there’s any conceivable primary challenge, you take your shot.” Hilliard, of course, lost to Davis, whose campaign funds reached $781,000.

The AIPAC concentrates on Congress while the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations (CPMAJO), made up of the heads of 51 Jewish organizations, concentrates on the executive branch of the US government.

Every congressman knows the names of those critics of Israel who have been undone by the lobby. Take Senator J William Fulbright, whose 1963 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee detailed how five million tax-deductible dollars from philanthropic Americans had been sent to Israel and then recycled back to the US for distribution to organizations seeking to influence public opinion in favour of Israel. This cost him the chance of being Secretary of State.

He was defeated in the 1974 Democratic primary after pro-Israeli money poured into the campaign funds of his rival, Governor Dale Bumpers, following a statement by the AIPAC that Fulbright was “consistently unkind to Israel and our supporters in this country”.

Paul Findley, who spent 22 years as a Republican congressman from Illinois, found his political career destroyed after he had campaigned against the Israeli lobby — although, ironically, his book on the subject, ‘They Dare to Speak Out’ was nine weeks on The Washington Post bestseller list, suggesting that quite a number of Americans want to know why their congressmen are so pro-Israeli.

Just two months ago, the US House of Representatives voted 352 to 21 to express its unqualified support for Israel. The Senate voted 94 to two for the same motion. Even as they voted, Ariel Sharon’s army was continuing its destructive invasion of the West Bank. “I do not recall any member of Congress asking me if I was in favour of patting Israel on the back...” James Abu Rizk, an Arab-American of Lebanese origin, told the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee afterwards. “No one else, no average American, has been asked either. But that is the state of American politics today... The votes and bows have nothing to do with the legislators’ love for Israel. They have everything to do with the money that is fed into their campaigns by members of the Israeli lobby. My estimate is that $6bn flows from the American Treasury to Israel each year.”

Within days, 42 US governors turned up in Sacramento to sign declarations supporting Israel. California governor Gray Davis and New York governor George Pataki — California has the largest Jewish population of any state except New York — arranged the meeting.

Sometimes the support of Israel’s loyalists in Congress turns into farce. Tom Delay — reacting to CNN founder Ted Turner’s criticism of Israel — went so far out of his way to justify Israeli occupation of the West Bank that he blurted out on MSNBC television that the Palestinians “should become citizens” of Israel, an idea unlikely to commend itself to his friend Ariel Sharon.

Censorship takes many forms. When Ishai Sagi and Ram Rahat-Goodman, two Israeli reserve soldiers who refused to serve in the West Bank or Gaza, were scheduled to debate their decision at Sacramento’s Congregation B’nai Israel in May, their appearance was cancelled. Steve Meinreith, who is chairman of the Israel Affairs Committee at B’nai Israel, remarked bleakly that “intimidation on the part of certain sectors of the community has deprived the entire community of hearing a point of view that is being widely debated in Israel. Some people feel it’s too dangerous...”

Does President Bush? His long-awaited Middle-East speech was Israeli policy from start to finish. A group of Jewish leaders, including Elie Wiesel and Alan Dershowitz — who said recently that the idea of executing the families of Palestinian suicide bombers was a legitimate if flawed attempt at finding a balance between preventing terrorism and preserving democracy — and the AIPAC and CPMAJO heads all sent clear word to the president that no pressure should be put on Israel.

Wiesel — whose courage permeates his books on the Holocaust but who lamentably failed to condemn the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Beirut in 1982 at the hands of Israel’s Lebanese allies, said he felt “sadness”, but his sadness was “with Israel, not against Israel” because “after all the Israeli soldiers did not kill” — took out a full page in The New York Times. In this, he urged Bush to “please remember that Ariel Sharon, a military man who knows the ugly face of war better than anyone, is ready to make ‘painful sacrifices’ to end the conflict.”

Sharon was held “personally responsible” for the massacre by Israel’s own commission of inquiry — but there was no mention of that from Wiesel, who told reporters in May that he would like to revoke Arafat’s Nobel prize.

President Bush was not going to oppose these pressures. His father may well have lost his re-election because he dared to tell Israel that it must make peace with the Arabs. Bush is not going to make the same mistake — nor does brother Jeb want to lose his forthcoming governorship election. Thus Sharon’s delight at the Bush speech, and it was left to a lonely and brave voice — Mitchell Plitnick of the Jewish Voice for Peace — to state that “few speeches could be considered to be as destructive as that of the American president... Few things are as blinding as unbridled arrogance.”

Or as vicious as the messages that still pour in to Dennis Bernstein and Barbara Lubin, whose Middle East Children’s Alliance, co-ordinating with Israeli peace groups, is trying to raise money to rebuild the Jenin refugee camp. “I got a call the other day at 5am,” Bernstein told me. “This guy says to me: ‘You got a lot of nerve going and eating at that Jewish deli.’ What comes after that?” Before I left San Francisco, Lubin showed me her latest e-mails. “Dear ...,” one of them begins, “When we want your opinion you ... Nazi ..., we will have one of your Palestinian buddies ... it [sic] of you. I hope that in your next trip to the occupied territories you are blown to bits by one of your Palestinian buddies [sic] bombs.” Another, equally obscene, adds that “you should be ashamed of yourself, a so-called Jewish woman advocating the destruction of Israel”.

Less crude language, of course, greeted President Bush’s speech. Pat Robertson thought the Bush address “brilliant”. Senator Charles Schumer, a totally loyal pro-Israeli Democrat from New York, said that “clearly, on the politics, this is going to please supporters of Israel as well as the Christian coalition types”. He could say that again. For who could be more Christian than President George W. Bush? — Courtesy: The Independent, London.