HIS own statements, and reports emanating from those who have recently talked with him, suggest that General Musharraf may be willing to revise or even withdraw some of the amendments to the Constitution that his National Reconstruction Bureau has been churning out. There may be an opportunity then, even if limited, of saving our political system from the more unwholesome changes that the NRB contemplates.

The opposition politicians assembled in the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) and elsewhere do not seem to regard this opportunity as worthy of their attention. They have adopted a set of propositions which they keep repeating, knowing perfectly well that the general has no intention of accepting most of them. At the same time, they are in no position to secure an overthrow of the present regime by engineering a popular revolt. In fact, many of them are getting ready to contest the forthcoming elections under the very same rules that they condemn.

Their position may be summed up as follows: (1) General Musharraf should step down and transfer power to an interim government which should hold the elections; (2) either he or some other, hitherto unidentified, authority should appoint a new election commission to conduct the elections; (3) the general has no right to amend the Constitution, particularly the right to change its parliamentary form; (4) the proposed amendments will give the president excessive power, and they will further weaken the federal character of our system; (5) the election-related regulations are designed to exclude established politicians and parties from the forthcoming elections.

The general rejects outright the first three of the opposition’s assertions, but he may be amenable to suggestion on the issue of distributing authority between the organs of government and regulations concerning the elections. The subject most disturbing to the politicians relates to the president’s primacy in the government and his authority to dismiss a prime minister and the assemblies. Allow me to offer an observation or two in this regard beyond those I have already submitted in my earlier articles.

There was a time in England when ministers did actually serve during the sovereign’s (king’s or queen’s) “pleasure.” That ceased to be the case long ago, but the British, quaint as they are in their attachment to tradition, have retained the terminology in their formal speech, even though it is well understood that the sovereign’s pleasure would be what the prime minister says it should be. Under the Government of India Act of 1935, the federal part of which came into force on independence and which then remained our constitution until 1956, the prime minister was to serve during the governor-general’s pleasure. It should be noted that the British parliament had made this law for the governing of a subject people. It conferred a good deal of real authority and power on the governor-general, making his “pleasure” much more consequential and functional than that of the sovereign back in England.

Having inherited the notion from the British, we inserted the relevant language in our own successive constitutions. But instead of treating it only as a decorative expression we, unlike the British, acted as if the term (“pleasure”) was to be taken literally and seriously. The authors of the 1973 Constitution tried to circumscribe the scope of the president’s “pleasure,” but Ziaul Haq reversed the effect of their effort. Nawaz Sharif went overboard in negating Ziaul Haq’s reassertion of the president’s supremacy, but now General Musharaff wants to retrieve as much of it as he can.

A related notion that we inherited from the British is that of “discretion.” The governor-general, and later the presidents, were authorized to act in their discretion in making certain appointments, and in dismissing prime ministers and assemblies. They interpreted this authority to mean that they were free to do as they pleased. The two packages of proposed amendments currently in circulation would give the president the authority to act in his discretion in numerous situations, including appointments and dismissals.

These two notions have caused a great deal of disruption in our political system. Keeping in view the peculiarities of our political culture, all of us interested in good governance should want the term, “pleasure,” taken out of our constitutional vocabulary. Admittedly, law cannot anticipate every situation that may arise in a given area and, therefore, public officials have to be allowed some reliance on their own good sense and judgment — that is , “discretion” — in doing their work. But it should be made clear that, while resorting to “discretion,” they must act within the overall intent of the law and with due regard to the public interest.

Turning to the issue that agitates the politicians the most, let it first be said that normally there is no reason for the assemblies to be dismissed, and none has ever been dismissed for its own incompetence. They have been sent away because their removal was the only way whereby a president could get rid of an unwanted prime minister. But why should a president want to dismiss a prime minister? If differences over policy are the problem, the remedy is to demarcate each official’s sphere of authority in unambiguous language. The reason usually given in the past, however, has been that the prime minister and his government were incompetent and corrupt. This may not have been the real reason in each case, but if and when the allegation is well founded, the system should provide a way of dealing with it.

Organs of civil society, the party system, and, most importantly, the parliament itself have not been effective in promoting competence and discouraging corruption in government. General Musharraf believes that the president should, therefore, have the authority to sack a delinquent prime minister. From the politicians’ standpoint, there is a redeeming feature in his design: he wants to be able to fire a prime minister without having to dismiss the assemblies at the same time. Ideally, he should have no such authority, but he is determined to have it. The task before us at this time then is to persuade him to “shed” the element of arbitrariness from his exercise of this authority.

He wants to act in this matter in consultation with the National Security Council (NSC). This is not satisfactory, because this is a body he will dominate. Moreover, the NSC is the least popular of the innovations he intends to instal. One of the suggestions reportedly made to him (during a recent consultation he had with constitutional lawyers and intellectuals) would have him consult with a committee of parliament, including members from both sides of the aisle. Chairmen and the leading opposition members of the various parliamentary committees might also serve as a forum that he could consult.

I should like to suggest another way. Proceeding from the premise that no public official should be penalized without cause, the president should have to make his case against the prime minister known in terms as specific as possible. Incompetence with reference to a politician can be a very airy-fairy thing, but corruption is not. Provable acts of corruption will draw penalties, but a widespread impression of corruption on the part of a prime minister and his colleagues may deprive him of the support of his peers in parliament.

If the president has credible reasons to believe that the prime minister is engaging in, or allowing, corruption of one sort or another, he should require the latter to obtain a vote of confidence from the National Assembly and, at the same time, forward to the assembly his bill of particulars against the prime minister. On an occasion such as this, party discipline (as spelled out in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution) should be suspended and members enabled to vote according to their conscience through secret ballot. This procedure may work reasonably well. It is likely that if the case against the prime minister is credible, members will not want to share the odium he carries, which they will invite (and possibly their own dismissal) if they still support him.

Moving on to another subject, while the general appears determined to have his NSC, he is willing to reconsider its mission and mode of operation. Once again, instead of simply opposing it, politicians and other critics may concentrate on minimizing its disruptive potential. The best strategy may be to hold the general to the right things he has been saying about its role, to wit: that it will not interfere with the government’s working, that it will be “non-intrusive,” that it will have no executive or regulatory authority, and that its status will be purely advisory. As I said in an earlier article, the general has also made statements calculated to elevate the council’s mission. This part of the act may not amount to much more than a “trial balloon,” which may fall flat if we simply ignore it. .

Some of the proposals contained in the second package of amendments deserve comment but I will have to defer that to a subsequent article. I do, however, want to make a quick observation about one of them. The National Reconstruction Bureau — which devised the district administration system that is still struggling to find its feet, and which would have us live under a new political system of its making-wants to be elevated to the status of a constitutionally mandated permanent institution. In other words, it wants our systems of government, administration, and politics to stay open to constant reconsideration and restructuring.

It is possible that in advancing this proposal those who run the Bureau are looking for job security and other gratifications. But it is conceivable also that in some misguided way they think the prospect of perpetual change is a more powerful creative or reformist agent than stability can be. In either case, they are no friends of ours.

THE two packages of constitutional amendments unfolded recently by the National Reconstruction Bureau for public comments have sidestepped at least five vital areas that could help stabilize political structure of the country.

These areas relate to the office of the National Assembly Speaker, selection of parliamentary candidates by parties, legislation through ordinances, government funding of election campaigns and discretionary powers.

The performance of the parliament hinges largely on the role of the Speaker. In a parliamentary system the Speaker of the house of representatives after entering upon his office is taken out of party politics. He conducts the proceedings of the house not as representative of the majority party in the house but as a neutral umpire. By virtue of his office he becomes the custodian of the entire house. To maintain his impartial status he must be above party political controversy. Even after retirement a Speaker should not take part in political issues.

A Speaker of British house of commons must keep away from old party colleagues or any one group. He does not use, for instance, the commons dining rooms or bars. A continuing-speaker is often returned unopposed in general elections when he stands as ‘ The Speaker seeking re-election “. In any case he would not campaign. Ever since the office came to be called by the present title in 1377, no speaker has been removed through a vote of no confidence.

Even in India once elected to office, the Speaker shuns his party affiliation and is expected to function in a true spirit of independence and impartiality. Over the years conventions have already been established and the Speaker has indeed become a true symbol of the dignity and independence of the house as well as the guardian of the rights and privileges of its members.

In our country the office of the Speaker has not been given the privilege of being elected unopposed while seeking re-election. On the contrary almost all speakers lost in the next parliamentary elections. Sahibzada Farooq Ali Khan, and Hamid Nasir Chathha are examples. Article 53 of the Constitution dealing with the office of the Speaker does not stipulate an impartial role for him. There is need to outline impartial role of the Speaker in this article. He should be given privilege of unopposed re-election at the polls. Afterwards his election as Speaker should be automatic. The traditional concept of a strong centre in the country finds reflection in political party ranks also. Central election boards of parties allot party tickets to candidates for the national and provincial assemblies. Since the candidates get parliamentary tickets from the central body of the party they remain oblivious to the needs of the people of their constituencies.

In Britain and some other countries the party members at the grass-root level select the parliamentary candidates. The central caucus normally goes with the decision of the constituents. This lower party cadre can even demand withdrawal of the candidates in the middle of the parliamentary term. This keeps the member on his toes and he goes an extra mile to keep his constituents in good humour. The political parties need to be coaxed to allot tickets to the prospective members on the basis of their mandate by the people of the constituency.

Article 89 of our Constitution empowers the president to promulgate ordinances for making legislation on matters necessitating immediate action when the assembly is not in session. This is an extraordinary provision to meet extraordinary situations. But this provision has been used for making legislation of controversial nature. Instances are not lacking when ordinances were issued barely a day before the start of the session of the assembly or one or two days after the session. The governments of the day take an easy route to legislation through issuing ordinances without debates in the parliament. Sometimes ordinances are reissued when they lapse at the end of their four-month long life.

Legislation through ordinances became so ‘popular’ with the democratically elected political governments that according to a newspaper report as many 117 ordinances were issued in 1995. That means the issuance of one ordinance every third day. The government would be doing a great service to the nation if it bans legislation through ordinances. Neighbouring India also resorts to legislation through ordinances like POTO ( POTA) black law. A bad precedent is never a tail-blazer.

A combination of political factors now in the melting pot looks poised to give a new look to political scenario in the country. In a way a new political complexion is in the making in the wake of the induction of a good number of women, technocrats and perhaps college graduate members in the parliament. Many bigwigs, long-time feudal politicians are on the slippery slope because of the graduation conditionality for parliamentary elections.

Still more tapestry could be added to the political scene if state funding is provided to political parties to help finance lower middle class political debutants. Public financing to political parties is made available in Spain, Germany and some other countries on the basis of the votes polled by the parties at general polls. The law of political parties (1978) makes such funding available in Spain. In Germany public funding is allowed to all parties from January 1,1994.

Parties receive funds from the state each year of DM 1.3 per vote for up to five million valid votes, which they poll in elections to the lower house. For each additional vote they receive DM 1.00. The public grants for all parties together may not total more than DM 245 million per year. The scale of part financing of a party by the state must not exceed the sum of the revenue the party itself has procured in the course of the year.

Permission to parties to receive public donations is another possibility. But in a country like ours where democracy is still withering at the roots the concept of public donations is fraught with dangers. There is danger of big donors influencing the parties for their own ends. Other measures could be put in place to curtail election expenses. These could be minimized by reducing the duration of election campaigns and putting strict checks on lavish spending during the run up to the polls.

Our constitution grants discretionary powers to the president and the prime minister in making a number of appointments. A tug of war between the presidents and the prime ministers on using these powers has for long muddied the political waters. The pendulum keeps on swinging from one side to the other. At stake are prize jobs of the service chiefs, judges of the superior judiciary, chief election commissioner, provincial governors and ambassadors.

Without attempting to apportion blames, it could said without much fear of contradiction that discretion resulted in breeding nepotism and favouritism. Discretion has no place in a parliamentary system of government and sooner it is eliminated better it will be for the health of the society.

The government will be doing an invaluable service to the nation if it makes some provision in the Constitution banishing all discretionary powers from the highest to the lowest level in the administration. Our presidents and prime ministers will perhaps look more elegant without these powers.

SEVENTY-THREE days to the elections, it is time for President Musharraf to explain to the people what his government has done, or has failed to do, for them in his 33 months. This is long enough time. Now is the time for half-way reckoning, if not the ultimate.

The president should put across his successes or failures in terms that affect the life of the common man but not in the jargon of soldiers or politicians, economists or financiers. Of that they have had enough already.

What his advisers should study and the president should communicate to the people through the media is whether in his time the state oppression and private crime have lessened and the people are able to get easier, quicker and cheaper remedies from the government offices and courts of law. Second, have the jobs and other earning opportunities increased? Thirdly, are the municipal services and public utilities, especially electric supply, performing better?

These three would be but a litmus test of the overall performance of his administration leaving out the more nebulous areas of education, health, irrigation, family planning and the rest which lend themselves more easily to exaggeration or rhetoric. It gives little satisfaction to the people nor relieves their daily grind to hear that the macro-economic indicators have improved or that the foreign currency reserves are at a record high. The terms of governments and patience of the people run out much before benefits begin to flow from the indicators and reserves.

General Ziaul Haq thrived on the productive investments made during the preceding PPP regime. General Musharraf has not been that lucky. The investments during the PPP and Muslim League governments before him strengthened the infrastructure (power stations by Benazir Bhutto and roads by Nawaz Sharif) but aggravated the common people’s hardship by higher tolls and tariffs without commensurate addition to their incomes.

Gen Musharraf has chosen the course of reforms and accountability. Both, if at all wisely conceived and honestly executed, would take a long time to yield results for the benefit of the people. Sending an admiral to jail may be an unprecedented action but does not help the common man. Bundling the deputy commissioner out may have satisfied some long-felt urges but it hasn’t made the administration more responsive or less expensive. Giving all its time and attention to punishing some corrupt politicians, bureaucrats or loan defaulters and abolishing a long-set pattern of the district administration thus has been a bad bargain for the government. The applause it earned was short-lived but the disillusionment caused by the neglect of the safety and essential needs of the people has been much deeper.

The laws and the established institutions and the men who administered them should have been strengthened instead of creating new bureaus run by soldiers and consultants. It couldn’t have been easy for the present-day generals to prove wrong the guru of them all, Field Marshal Lord Wavell. When leaving India, he said the ideal he was leaving behind was the judge and the district officer whom the poor and the privileged alike could look up to for justice and sympathy.

Judged in the light of the new district governments’ performance over the past one year, the answer to the first question raised earlier — whether the redress and justice were now available to the people quicker and cheaper — must be in the negative. It will be long, if ever, before a working relationship is established between an elected political nazim and the police. It wasn’t always smooth enough between the district magistrate and police despite 200 years of coexistence.

The public safety commissions, ombudsmen and complaint committees which were to keep the police under surveillance have not come into being in a year, nor perhaps will after the elections as the ministers and party bosses would rather deal directly with the police than through the nazims or the commissions and committees.

The loss of esteem and impartiality long suffered by the judiciary only hastened as it was required more than before to give judicial verdicts on questions which were essentially political. The superior courts have been criticized before, but the bar councils and associations deciding not ever to go to the Supreme Court impugning the government actions calling it a sheer waste of time is unheard of. So is the public statement of a retired judge that the Supreme Court’s review of its earlier order on interest (riba) amounted to hypocrisy.

A commendable view of this affair can be the freedom of expression that the people, the professions and the press enjoy under a military government which they didn’t under representative governments. The government should not however too frequently confront the judges with executive actions which are time consuming and which compel them to choose between complete impartiality and their own career. The wide range of amendments contemplated in the Constitution on the eve of the elections pose such a problem to the judiciary.

The government wants to provide a constitutional cover to the district governments. The stress and wrangling that have marked the first year of their existence are instructive. The provinces view them as 105 Trojan Horses of the centre undermining their autonomy. The new system, both from the administrative and from political standpoints, calls for a dispassionate review in the light of the lessons learnt in the first year. Referendum is one — even the rigging was botched; obloquy exceeded the crime. The municipal functions of the district governments have become subordinate to their politics. The deterioration caused by lack of resources and power tussle is obvious.

Time magazine in its cover story of this week lauds Musharraf for surviving the number and magnitude of political crises as no other world leader has in recent times. That may be so but his biggest crisis lies ahead — in shifting his constituency from the barracks to the parliament through a fair election. In that he will be judged by his performance of the three years past and not by his plans for the next five.

The sole objective of holding the elections should be to get out of the hole Nawaz Sharif dug for himself and not to dig it deeper. Replacing an autocratic prime minister with a president buttressed by a National Security Council would do exactly that. Mercifully, President Musharraf also seems to have now come round to the view that the constitutional amendments before the elections should be few and only aim at restoring a balance between the executive and legislative organs of the government.

To the president, the lynchpin in the balance of power is the National Security Council with the chiefs of the armed forces as its members. To the political parties that is anathema. Going by the advice of the moderators, the president should draw the membership of the Council from the National Assembly, Senate and the provincial assemblies and yet associate the four chiefs with its deliberations in situations of national crises.

Conventions which are the soul of a parliamentary system refuse to grow in our political environment. Some rules thus need to be incorporated in the Constitution to give the smaller provinces a greater sense of participation in the federal set-up which, in our circumstances, will always remain dominant despite clamour for provincial autonomy. Some such rules could be: the president and the prime minister should not belong to the same province; second, no one province should hold more than one of the four top offices, that is, the president, prime minister, senate chairman and NA speaker; third, all the provincial assemblies must also vote for a constitutional change by two-thirds majority before it takes effect; and, fourth — and this is for the independence of judiciary — the judges should not be eligible to hold any office of profit — including political — after retirement.

Nawaz Sharif did not feel secure and powerful enough even when the president and senate chairman both hailed not just from his province but also from his city. He wanted even the chief of the army to come from his home town and tribe. The distribution of the four offices over the provinces would have curbed his authoritarianism and prevented his downfall.

GENERAL Pervez Musharraf, while addressing a workshop organized by the NAB on anti-corruption strategy, once again demonstrated his repulsion for the civilian governments by accusing previous democratic governments of indulging in massive corruption.

To support his point, he alleged that in the last ten years Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) had been squandered and he couldn’t find any trace of concrete project completed during the 1990s except the motorway and the two new airport projects in Karachi and Lahore.

Finally, he put the blame for the rampant corruption in the country on the politicians, the civil bureaucracy and the financial institutions. According to him, all democratic governments were an “axis of evil”. They did all the wrong and his government is discharging the divine task of repair.

Contrary to the general’s assertion, the PML government pursued an anti-corruption strategy that succeeded in bringing down the international ranking of Pakistan from the second most corrupt country to the seventh in 1999, whereas during the present regime’s rule this rating has remained unchanged according to 2001 Transparency International Index.

The previous government took several good governance initiatives, which resulted in tangible benefits to the country. The budget of the prime minister’s secretariat was reduced to less than Rs 160 million per annum which increased to over Rs 870 million per annum during General Musharraf government, making him the most expensive ruler of our nation. During the PML government the portfolio of non-performing loans was Rs 213 billion but during the present government it has increased to Rs 280 billion.

It is said that political governments lack the will to proceed against defaulters but the previous government increased cash recovery of defaulted loans by over one hundred per cent to Rs 29 billion in two years while General Musharraf’s government could collect only Rs 27 billion in two years.

General Musharraf’s claim that there was corruption at the highest levels of the previous government is baseless, if it was so then why his government has failed to file even a single reference against the former prime minister and his cabinet members in the last three years. This is a proof that these are only false accusations and part of a campaign to malign democratic leadership. The previous government surrendered all discretionary powers while General Musharraf wants to have all discretionary powers under the proposed constitutional package.

The PML government had surrendered all quotas in educational institutions to promote merit but the military government has introduced quotas for the children of military personnel, which will promote mistrust between the civil and military sections of society on the one hand, and discourage merit in education, on the other.

Last year, General Musharraf appointed nine former generals, out of thirteen, as ambassadors. The general alleged that the previous government embarked on one-sided accountability but so has been the accountability drive of his government against politicians, which is tainted with victimization and horse-trading as the stalwarts of corruption remain well protected under the umbrella of the QML, the king’s party.

The allegation of General Musharraf that during the last ten years no worthwhile development project, besides the Motorway and two airports, were initiated and completed is also baseless. During last PML government thirty major development projects, which were initiated during the 1990s under various democratic governments, were either in progress, or complete or in advanced stages of completion.

These include Chashma Nuclear Power Plant, canal projects (Rs 50 billion), Ghazi Barotha project, rural roads (Rs 14 billion), village electrification (Rs 23) billion), Kohat Tunnel, dualization of N-5 Karachi-Peshawar highway, Telecommunication Digital Exchanges and fibre optic infrastructure, Gwadar Port project, Makran Coastal Highway project, Peshawar-Islamabad motorway project, Karachi-Hyderabad motorway project, Faisalabad-Pindi-Bhattian motorway project, Karachi Northern bypass, Northern Areas roads and telecommunications projects.

What General Musharraf and his government are propagating is influencing the psychology of the nation. If you meet Pakistanis inside or outside Pakistan, one can’t help realizing that we today are one of the most confused nations with very low self-esteem and confidence.

Both Iskander Mirza and Ayub Khan, in order to justify their action, hurled accusations of corruption against the political leadership of the 1950s. In the last fifty years, not a single case has been established against Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy, Khawaja Nazimuddin, and Chaudhary Mohammad Ali. General Ziaul Haq dismissed the Junejo government on charges of corruption but reinstalled his provincial governments. No case was filed against either the prime minister or any of his cabinet members.

After 1988, no government was allowed to function for more than two and a half years. Between 1988 and 1999, twelve governments were installed and each time when a government was dismissed at the behest of or nod from the military establishment, it were the same corruption charges levelled by every successive caretaker government to justify the act. The result is that demonizing of democratic leaders and the process has left a deep imprint on our national psyche. No doubt, under some governments corruption was widespread. But demolishing the institutions is no solution either as there is no short-cut to controlling corruption which calls for allowing the institutions to become stronger and exercise their regulatory and overseeing influence. Demolishing and uprooting institutions only helps the cause of corruption by further weakening their writ and role.

The question is whether there is more corruption in Pakistani politics than in India and Bangladesh. Transparency International rated Bangladesh as the most corrupt country in its index of nintyone countries but it continues to have a stable democracy and a stronger economy as compared to Pakistan. In twentyfive years, Bangladesh has had two parliaments that have completed a full term of five years and we are still struggling to have one. The Bangladesh economy is posting over five per cent growth rate while we who are ruled by the righteous are struggling at three per cent. In Bangladesh, the prime minister recently removed the army chief, who had two years of service left, and yet there was no martial law. In Pakistan, the prime minister exercised his constitutional power of sacking the army chief, everything was packed up.

In India, during the peak of recent tension with Pakistan, both navy and air force chiefs were removed on grounds of differences with the political government, but skies did not fall. In India, during the last six years there were three elections without any party winning a majority and the political scene was almost a theatre. But no one disputed the process. Ultimately the leaders learnt to form and run a stable coalition government. There is no alternative to letting the process continue and finding solutions within the system. Societies that have a future in the twentyfirst century will be the ones in which respect for civil governance and subservience of military to civil authority are fundamental values.

Since 1951 we have had a politicized military, which has ruled Pakistan directly for more than half of its existence and indirectly for the remaining period by protecting its turf and keeping key strategic policy decisions outside the domain of political leadership. When it comes to fixing the blame for the problems of Pakistan, unfortunately the mud is thrown at democratic leadership. The future of Pakistani politics and state depends on one central issue: whether our military will assume a purely professional role as envisioned by the Quaid-i-Azam, and the governance of the country is carried out by the people of Pakistan or the military gets a more formal political role as envisioned by General Musharraf and his predecessors.

It is time we shunned the practice of discrediting ourselves, and instead of indulging in self-pity and mutual reviling we develop the mindset of a winner, which starts with a strong self-image and positive synergy. This can’t happen unless we as a nation close our ranks and agree on a common agenda and vision.

Pakistan has only one way forward. This path is one of national reconciliation and dialogue. All major players of society, namely politicians, bureaucracy, judiciary, military, business, media and civil society, must sit around one table and first apologize to the nation for their past mistakes as all are equally responsible for the mess we are in and then develop a national consensus on the following three issues within the framework of the 1973 Constitution.

First, a national economic, social, and political reforms agenda to be pursued y us for the next ten years regardless of the change of government; second, a national code of ethics for each party in order to realize the national agenda; third, a framework for holding fair, free and transparent elections so that October elections result in a stable democracy and a government that can complete its term. Any other approach will further divide us and we will slip deeper into the trap of poverty and under-development.

General Musharraf’s campaign against civilian and democratic institutions is misdirected, causing loss of national self-esteem and confidence. The civilians and politicians are as pious and as corrupt as their brethren in the armed forces as they belong to the same society. Instead of maligning and demolishing the civil institutions, the general should think in terms of national reconciliation.

The writer was deputy chairman, Planning Commission in Nawaz Sharif government.