CURRENTLY, Pakistan is going through a fourth transition from direct military rule to an indirect one under the supervision of Gen Musharraf. Like his three predecessors he is directing the transition in a way that his personal power and the continuity of his policies and programmes are not disturbed. Despite resistance from a number of political parties, he seems to be succeeding in his task.

Gen Musharraf’s decision to convert his direct military rule into an indirect one is not a unique phenomenon. He is just following the pattern set by his three predecessors who staged coups. The decision emerges from a deep-rooted culture of military elite that has shaped civil-military relations in the country and the attitude of this elite towards democracy and politicians.

The culture of military elite is based on two basic assumptions about democracy and politicians. First, the democracy practised by politicians is a sham one and an inefficient method of governance. Second, being inherently corrupt and inefficient, civilians lack both the motivation and capability to protect the national interest. From these assumptions the military elite has derived what may be called the “doctrine of necessary” to justify military intervention.

It proclaims that whenever the leaders of armed forces perceive that politicians are subverting the national interest, it is their patriotic duty to remove them from power and directly rule the country. A corollary is that when the military elite is compelled to transfer power to civilians they must ensure that politicians do not deviate from the course charted for them. Gen Musharraf has added a second corollary of avoiding interventions by giving the military a permanent place in politics.

To ensure that the transition does not deviate from the course set for it, Gen. Musharraf has used five methods most of them a legacy of Gen. Ayub and Gen. Zia. They include maintaining control of the military elite over some vital areas of public policy, retaining Article 58(2) (b), setting up of a National Security Council under the LFO, legitimizing his election as president through a referendum, and keeping with him the office of the COAS after becoming president.

The first method the general is using to control the civilian government is to keep intact the traditional division in control of public policy in which a number of vital areas of policies have remained out of bounds for civilian governments. These include the appointment and sacking of senior military officials, budgetary allocations for defence and the nuclear programme, relations with the US and India, and Kashmir and Afghan issues. Maintained through the coercive power of the military elite and powerlessness of civilian governments, this division has prevented the emergence of fully responsible democratic government. The civilian governments are held responsible and sometimes punished for actions actually taken by military leaders.

While the military elite freely intervenes in politics by staging coups and by other means without facing consequences, the civilian leaders occasionally entering the forbidden zone get punished. Junejo’s boldness to hold an inquiry against the generals responsible for the explosion in the Ojhri Camp in 1988 earned him the dismissal of his government and assemblies by Ziaul Haq. Nawaz Sharif’s initiative to improve relations with India and settle the Kashmir dispute, his boldness to remove COAS Jehangir Karamat and dismiss COAS Musharraf earned him the overthrow of his government, life imprisonment and then a life in exile.

The insertion of Article 58 (2) (b) in the 1973 Constitution is the second method of controlling the civilian governments. Gen Zia forced its insertion in exchange for lifting the martial law and restoring democratic rule. After its repeal in 1997 with the consensus of all political parties Gen. Musharraf has now re-inserted the Article in his LFO. As in the past, the Article is likely to be used for dismissing civilian governments in future leading to political instability, frequent elections and poor governance.

The Article 58(2) (b) has structured the relations between the president and the prime minister in a way that makes a clash between the two almost inevitable. The clash between Gen. Zia and his handpicked prime minister Junejo, between Ghulam Ishaq Khan (GIK) and Benazir in 1990, between GIK and Sharif in 1993 and Leghari and Benazir in 1997 demonstrated the inevitability of this clash. In this it was always the powerful presidents backed by army chiefs who overwhelmed the civilian prime ministers. Contrary to their claims of using the Article in public interest, the presidents often used it to expand their personal power, prevent incursions of civilian governments into the prohibited zone.

To justify his use of the Article twice, GIK engineered two crises. First he supported the Sharif-led IJI to destabilize the first Benazir government and later allied himself with the Benazir-led PPP to sack of the Nawaz government. The four-time use of the Article from 1988 to 1997 was done either with the prompting of the then COAS or with his support, making the actions virtually four mini-coups.

Inevitably, the actions of four presidents after using 58(2) (b) impinged on the independence of the judiciary. After the death of Gen Zia who had dismissed the Junejo government in 1988, his army successor COAS Beg, by his own confession, prevented the Supreme Court from restoring the Junejo Government. President GIK made several changes in the higher judiciary to get a favourable verdict after using the Article against the Benazir government. He subverted the judgment of Supreme Court against his dismissal of the Nawaz government in 1993 by refusing to implement it in its true form and spirit.

To ensure that the dismissed prime minister and his/her party did not return to power through elections Zia, GIK and Leghari attempted to split the erstwhile ruling party, appointed highly partisan care-taker governments and engaged in pre-poll rigging. GIK filed six references against Benazir and 11 against PPP members in special courts, which they did not uphold. The result of these measures was that no dismissed PM ever returned to power immediately after dismissal under Article 58(2) (b).

Article 58(2) (b) is discriminatory and violates the principles of democracy and natural justice. A president can dismiss a prime minister and the National Assembly without suffering any adverse consequences even if the courts do not uphold his decision. GIK neither resigned nor suffered any consequences after the Supreme Court in 1993 declared his dismissal of the Sharif government unconstitutional and malicious. Before a move to impeach him could be initiated, he turned the tables on the restored government.

A third method of controlling civilian governments, first floated by Zia and then kept alive by Leghari and now made part of the LFO by Gen Musharraf is the creation of the much controversial National Security Council (NSC). Justified under the doctrine that the military should be brought in to keep it out of politics, the creation of the NSC realizes the long cherished dream of military leaders to have a constitutionally guaranteed role in politics sparing them the opprobrium and “inconvenience” of staging coups. The NSC further confirms that Musharraf’s civilianization is just a mechanism of converting his direct military rule into an indirect one.

The fourth method, which Zia devised and used and which Musharraf has recently repeated is to become president through a phoney referendum circumventing the constitutionally prescribed procedure. Both did this to create a pliant National Assembly which would not resist the indemnification of their coups and actions taken by them as well as to ensure a safe transition from direct to indirect military rule. With this expediency they deprived the office of president of its moral and constitutional authority and prestige. The fifth method prescribes that a COAS-president must not take off his uniform and a civilian president must secure the support of the COAS before acting against a civilian government. Following Ayub and Zia, Gen Musharraf is strictly adhering to this prescription. The combination of these two offices with the chairmanship of the NSC has made Musharraf the most powerful functionary of the government.

Four coups, four mini-coups during 1988 to 1996 and the use of the stated five methods of controlling civilian governments have retarded the growth of democratic institutions in the country. Exclusive control of the military over vital areas of public policy has created a dyarchy in which civilians become junior and sometimes powerless, partners and get punished for the actions of the senior partner. Besides producing four mini-coups, the Article 58(2) (b) has turned the parliamentary system into a presidential autocracy. Its four-time use has failed to solve the perennial problems of political instability, discontinuity in policies and programmes and prevalence of political and financial corruption.

Instead, it has aggravated them. The use of the Article has also deprived the citizens of their right to choose or remove the governments according to their judgment, fostering cynicism and political apathy among them. The election of two coup leaders as presidents through dubious referendums has robbed the office of its legitimacy and prestige. Combining the office of the president with that of the COAS, together with the NSC, has further extended the rule of the military elite with a civilian face.

Now that it has become clear that four coups, five mini-coups and 40 years of direct and indirect military rule have not cured the supposedly sick political system of the country, is it not the duty of the military elite to let democracy grow from its own internal dynamics free from their intervention while military devotes itself wholly to the task that nation has assigned to it?

The writer is a social scientist based in Islamabad. His email address: inayat@apollo.net.pk

MDGs — the millennium development goals — were adopted in September 2000 by the heads of government and state who attended a session of the UN held in New York. General Pervez Musharraf was among those who were present at the meeting and put Pakistan’s signature on what came to be called the Millennium declaration.

What did the declaration say, what are the targets it endorsed and what is the relevance of the declaration and the targets for Pakistan’s economic future? These questions have acquired special significance after the transfer of executive authority to an elected government. “We will spare no effort to promote democracy as well as respect for all internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms,” promised the signatories of the declaration. But these were not the only commitments the world’s statesmen made. Eight specific goals were incorporated in the document endorsed by the millennium special session. The first, and by far the most important of these, was the promise to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

Extreme poverty is defined in several different ways. The most commonly used measure is to count the number of people with incomes of less than one dollar a day or $365 a year. By this count there are some 1.2 billion people living in absolute poverty across the globe. The millennium target is to reduce their number by one-half, to no more than 600 million, by the year 2015. This will mean increasing the incomes of 600 million people to beyond $365 a year over the 15-year period between 2000 and 2015.

One important consequence of increasing incomes is a reduction in hunger since the poor spend more than four-fifths of their earnings on food. Halving the incidence of poverty will result in reducing the level of hunger in the world also by one-half.

The second millennium goal relates to education. As explained in the millennium declaration, education is important in its own right and has strong spillover benefits to mortality rates, income and even social cohesion. Worldwide, of the 680 million children of primary school age, 113 million are not attending school. Of these, not surprisingly, 97 per cent are in developing countries.

However, getting children to go to schools is only half the battle because they benefit only if they stay in the educational system and complete the cycle of primary education. And, it is important that the effort to educate children includes both sexes. Accordingly, the millennium declaration promises that children everywhere — boys and girls alike — will complete a full course of primary education.

The third millennium development goal specifically addresses the problem of gender inequality, the consequence of utter disregard of the rights of girls and women in many parts of the world. This discrimination is blatant in all aspects of human development — education, health, access to employment, disparities in wages and salaries, etc. The millennium signatories focused their attention on education and promised that gender disparities in primary and secondary education will be eliminated, preferably by 2005, and at all levels of education certainly by 2015.

That this is not an easy target to achieve can be appreciated by looking at some statistics on the prevalence and extent of gender inequality. For instance, of the world’s 854 million illiterate adults, 544 million (64 per cent) are women and of the 113 million children not in primary school, 68 million (60 per cent) are girls.

Education is just one aspect of human development in which women, often deliberately and sometimes by the action of the state, have been left behind. Around the world, including developed countries, women earn about 75 per cent as much as men when performing the same jobs. Domestic violence is common — and tolerated — against women in many societies. “Honour killings” of women in Pakistan and “bride burning” in India are especially gruesome examples of the rough justice meted out to women in many parts of the world. And around the world there are an estimated 100 million “missing” women who would be alive today but for infanticide, neglect or sex-selective abortions.

The millennium declaration, after committing itself to a series of goals directed at improving the well-being of the world’s women, turned its attention to children. The fourth millennium goal committed the nations of the world to reduce infant and child (children under the age of five) mortality rates by two-thirds by the year 2015. That there exists now, even after a number of impressive advances in health science, a wide gap in life expectancy at birth in developed and developing countries is largely the consequence of high rates of infant and child mortality in the world’s poor areas.

A girl born today in Japan has a 50 per cent chance of seeing the dawn of the 22nd century. A child born in Afghanistan today has only a one in four chances of reaching the age of five — or putting it differently — a 75 per cent chance of dying before reaching the age of five.

The most unfortunate aspect of a large incidence of infant and child death is that a significant number of them are preventable. Every year about 11 million children perish from preventable causes, often for want of simple and easily furnished improvements in nutrition, sanitation and maternal health and education. Immunizations against leading diseases are an important element in improving child survival.

After making significant gains in the 1980s, largely the consequence of a series of efforts mounted by such international organizations as WHO and UNICEF, immunizations in developing countries levelled off at about 75 per cent in the 1990s. In other words, 25 per cent of all children in the developing world do not receive protection against communicable diseases. The rapid spread of AIDS in Africa and Asia is further affecting the health and the rate of survival of children.

The fifth millennium goal encompasses improving maternal health. The UN declaration committed the world’s nations to reduce maternal mortality rates by three-quarters by 2015. Most of these deaths occur for two reasons: repeated pregnancies that take a heavy toll on women’s health and millions of women having to give birth without being attended by skilled health professionals.

The sixth millennium target deals with an area still not well understood — HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis and other diseases that continue to disable and kill millions of people in the developing world. According to one UN report, “by the end of 2000 almost 22 million people had died of AIDS, 13 million children had lost their mother or both parents to the disease and more than 40 million people were living with the HIV virus — 90 per cent of them in developing countries, 75 per cent in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

But, increasingly, AIDS was no longer an African disease. It was fast spreading to Asia with China and India destined to become its next big victims. One UN estimate puts the number of HIV infected people in India alone at four million and in China at one million.

AIDS was not the only big killer in the developing world. Every year there are more than 300 million cases of malaria, and 60 million people are infected with tuberculosis. While there is still no cure for AIDS, current medical technologies can prevent malaria and tuberculosis from being fatal. However, the lack of access to these treatments results in tuberculosis killing two million people a year and malaria another one million people. This crisis has both humanitarian and economic dimensions. Some years ago the World Bank developed a methodology to estimate the economic loss caused by such debilitating diseases as malaria and tuberculosis.

When these potential killers are present in an endemic form, the loss they cause can shave off a couple of percentage points from the rate of economic growth. Recognizing all this the world leaders who put their signatures on the millennium declaration pledged to halt and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015 and — also by the same year — to halt and begin to reverse the incidences of tuberculosis, malaria and other major diseases.

Having promised a great deal of action to directly address the problem posed by persistent poverty and to provide better educational and health coverage to the more under-privileged segments of the world’s population, the leaders from across the globe turned their attention to the steady deterioration of physical environment. They promised to integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources.

The world leaders recognized that global warming was a universal concern and that carbon dioxide emissions was one of its principal causes. The emission of this gas had increased quite dramatically in recent decades, from 5.3 billion tons in 1980 to an estimated 6.6 billion tons in 1998. Much of this emission came from sources in high-income countries. Nonetheless, there was a fear that as rates of economic growth continue to be sustained at a high level in China and increase in India — the two most populous countries of the world — the share of developing countries in carbon dioxide emissions would increase quite significantly.

One way of stopping, if not reversing, global warming was to create carbon dioxide sinks — trees and forests that absorb this gas and discharge oxygen into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the forest cover in most parts of the developing world was decreasing at an alarming rate.

But global environmental deterioration was not the only concern addressed by the world’s leaders at the millennium conference. They also looked at the local environment in which the world’s poor spent their lives. Accordingly, they pledged to halve the proportion of people without sustainable safe drinking water by 2015. They also promised to achieve, by 2020, a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers living in the developing world.

These seven sets of goals were ambitious. If realized they could bring about a profound improvement in the lives of hundreds of millions of the world’s poor people. Would these targets be attained simply because the leaders of the world had gathered in New York to celebrate the dawn of the new millennium?

The world leaders themselves provided the answer to this question. They recognized the need for developing a global partnership for development — a key component of which will be finding additional financial resources for the countries and people faced with economic and social distress. Some consensus was reached that it would take a total of $40-60 billion a year in addition to the current $56 billion already being provided. With this additional amount factored in, the world’s rich countries will be providing 0.5 per cent of their combined GNP as development assistance.

WRITING about the political scene in Pakistan today, is like stapling together a collection of real life vignettes which have the vague consciousness of a shared activity.

Consider the script. Three years of military rule which is supposed to have come to an end on October 10, has installed a less than exuberant president who refuses to slip out of his battle fatigues. A cheerful but shaky prime minister who is an archetype and whose chances of survival in office depend on the on-again, off-again life support system provided by an essentially provincial party of Sindh. And then there is the variegated opposition, half of which has suddenly become impeccably holistic and is in dogged pursuit of the goal of complete transfer of power to the elected representatives of the people.

How things change ! There was a time in the 1980s, when the religious right in Pakistan was a staunch ally of the military regime and displayed a close affinity with the Americans who supported and financed the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan. This was the period when the Russians had built public works, roads, hospitals and schools in Kabul, and provided education to the women of Afghanistan.

Opposition to the repressive regime of Ziaul Haq in those days came from the left and liberal elements who fought for the supremacy of the Constitution, the rule of law and human rights. At the time, these issues did not feature on the agenda of the clergy.

Today, in a dramatic reversal of roles, it is the religious right and not the left or the liberals that has taken upon itself the onerous task of upholding secular issues like the sanctity of the 1973 Constitution, the rule of law and the demand that the armed forces should return to the barracks. Qazi Hussain Ahmed of the Jamaat-i-Islami, when he is not going through the rigours of his calling, is in the forefront of the campaign against having a president in uniform, and in this he is acting like the liberals of the 1980s. Even his foreign policy, which is in sharp contrast to that of the establishment, is similar to the anti-American sentiment of the secular left during the worst period of the cold war. By a quirk of logic, it was the left and the liberals that welcomed the coup of 1999, because they still regard the military as secular and liberal.

The religious right has, in fact, been very focused on many of the issues that militate against the establishment of a democratic order in Pakistan. In an interesting survey, conducted by the Herald, a Karachi monthly news magazine, in its December issue, lawyers representing the three opposition parties — the PPP, MMA and PML(N) — had some testy comments on amendments to some of the articles of the Constitution. Take, for instance, Article 63: Disqualification of Members of Parliament.

The generally held view is that disqualification laws dealing with defaulters were being applied selectively by the military establishment that had overlooked the massive default committed by the Chaudhrys of Gujrat. Article 63(p) states that a person cannot run in the elections if “ he has been convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for having absconded by a competent court under any law for the time being in force.” Raza Rabbani of the PPP claims that this law appears to be specifically targeted at the chairperson of the PPP.

The reaction of Isa Khan, who represented the conglomerate of six religious parties, was quite acerbic. “ The law itself is not bad, but its implementation violates the spirit of the law. Jamali is said to be a defaulter to the tune of 34 crore rupees. Faisal Saleh Hayat is a defaulter. In fact, almost 40 per cent of the elected people have been involved in provable financial crimes but the law does not affect them.” On Article 58-2(b) Dissolution of the National Assembly, Isa Khan had this interesting comment. “This (Article) should remain a part of the Constitution but the powers should be confined to the dissolution of the cabinet. In case the dissolution of the assembly becomes absolutely necessary, the advice of the Supreme Court should be sought, provided the Supreme Court is able to act independently and not as a rubber-stamp of the rulers.”

This is strong language, and it is not very clear if Advocate Isa Khan’s pronouncements are a true reflection of the views of the MMA leadership. What is curious, however, is that this position is not consistent with the stand being taken by Qazi Hussain Ahmed, who is aware of the fact that this controversial Article was repealed by Nawaz Sharif in 1997, only to reappear, like a bad penny, in 2002.

Article 152A-1, Creation of the National Security Council, ruffled the feathers of all three lawyers. The view offered by Siddiqul Farooq of the PML(N) is interesting. “The army has a constitutional role (of defending the borders) to play as prescribed in the 1973 Constitution. Beyond that it is unacceptable and harmful to the country.” Isa Khan’s reaction was more ambivalent. “This is a supra-constitutional arrangement and cannot be acceptable under any circumstances. However, a National Security Council can be acceptable as a strictly advisory body whose recommendations are not binding. After all, the senior military cadre is made up of responsible people and may have some good advice to offer.”

There is another remarkable development which has taken place in the political arena. After 1985, the opposition inevitably conspired with the president to overthrow the government in power. And presidents Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Farooq Leghari duly obliged, giving rise to the prediction that no elected government would be allowed to run its full course in office. Today, by a curious twist of fate, it is the opposition that is fighting a rear guard action to keep the government in place. Even some of the pronouncements of the MMA hierarchy about cooperating with the government — curious though might seem — are indicative of this altered role.

The president has exhorted the opposition to stop getting bogged down in inconsequential and time wasting legal quibbling over matters such as the controversial Legal Framework Order. The LFO, however, is still agitating the minds of the opposition politicians in the PPP and the MMA. In fact, this issue is taking the form of a minor constitutional crisis which may have to be ultimately sorted out by the Supreme Court.

Opposition politicians are still grousing about the assumed inalienable right of the president to dismiss the prime minister and parliament and to continue to wear his military uniform. Ayaz Amir once wrote that Pakistan is a nation of lawyers. How right he is. One of these honourable gentlemen in a black coat, who hails from Matiari, has raised another legal issue which would be food for thought for the president’s legal advisers.

This lawyer asked me why the president had to swear for the second time when the oath which followed the controversial referendum had already justified the presidency for a period of five years. Isn’t the second oath a violation of the Supreme Court’s verdict, when the apex court had already decreed that the determination of the referendum’s validity should be left to the new parliament when it is formed? A bit of old fashioned legal gobbledygook, one might say. This lawyer didn’t think so. But those representing the establishment maintain that President Parvez Musharraf has taken the oath under the Constitution as amended by him.

The confusion does not end there. Abdul Hafiz Pirzada, author of the 1973 Constitution, while speaking in an interview on one of the television channels, said. “It is not our case that President Musharraf has become president for five years by virtue of the referendum.” He added that Sharifuddin Pirzada also took the same position. My friend from Matiari continued by pointing out that Mr Justice Shaikh Riaz Hussain, who administered the oath of office to President Pervez Musharraf at Aiwan-e-Saddar, had himself been sworn in under two constitutions, the 1973 Constitution and the military decreed Provisional Constitutional Order. This, in effect, means that the president has been sworn in under a constitution to which the Chief Justice does not necessarily owe allegiance. This might sound like a lot of hyperbole, but it is the sort of thing that legal minded people love to mull over and toss at one another. One wonders what the Rt.Hon. Lord Denning would have made of all this. Perhaps he might have said, “Too many oaths spoil the brief.”