WHAT exactly is at stake in the tussle over the LFO? For one thing, the principle of the sovereignty of parliament in legislative and constitutional matters. In this light, regardless of its content, the LFO is a non-thing until it receives the parliamentary seal. The Constitution, upon which the Supreme Court adjudicates off and on according to necessity, is one parliament passed and parliament amends.

We have had suspended constitutions, abrogated constitutions, and constitutions in abeyance. We have run out of fresh words to distinguish the current hiatus, but it exists if functional constitutional democracy is the approved gospel. How to return to the path of propriety? Only through parliamentary cooperation, otherwise the problem of legitimising things remains.

But General Musharraf began functioning in extra-parliamentary style from October 12, 1999. Why can he not carry on, as necessary, ordaining, devising referenda, or coming up with other ingenious solutions? If parliament does not rubberstamp his LFO, the system could even be genetically modified from parliamentary to presidential.

The rub there is that the office of president could then become as dominating as that of the COAS. This is not the way men in khaki have got accustomed to viewing suspended, abrogated, or even regular, constitutional states. And the colour of an LFO- made president’s constituency is khaki. It would be easier by far for General Musharraf to have parliament do the needful. And so the secondary question arises as to whether the LFO becomes more or less acceptable to parliamentarians according to its content.

The ‘ king’s party’ is with the khaki-clad president regardless, but there are not yet enough of them to satisfy the constitutional arithmetic. That is why the government has sought dialogue and consensus. The effort keeps stalling. Will the Musharraf-Jamali combine break the opposition through patriotic recourse to the carrot and the stick? It should not be difficult as the opposition is itself divisible and has been in political conflict. Moreover, the opposition has to contend with an expert propaganda machine which plays upon the public’s impatience with former democratic functioning. How long can they carry on thumping desks in the house without appearing futile, impotent and obstructive?

To many it seems that if this parliament questions General Musharraf’s LFO, it is being inconsistent and denying the electoral process that brought it into existence: parties and parliamentarians who think that way should not have entered the contest. There is also valid public apprehension as to what may happen if, in a prolonged stalemate that establishes it as non- working or unworkable, this house, too, is dissolved: do we have unvarnished emergency government and martial law? Or do we, rather hopelessly, undertake yet another caretaker lead-in to stale variations on electoral and constitutional themes?

With a world mobilized towards fighting global terror, democratic alternatives would have a less than fighting chance in the domestic context. So, is there a continuing logic in compromising over the LFO to stay within a circumscribed yet at least nominally democratic format rather as there was in fighting the elections to stay in political circulation? The eternal challenge in politics is calibrating pragmatism with principle.

But this may be a time when, in terms of a democratic future, the one can inflict a deathblow on the other and a choice has to be ventured.

It is for political leadership to effect such choices, but our political leadership functions at a handicap. It has to sustain exile or incapacitating incarceration. The only exception is the MMA, whose leadership is free and in domestic residence. Significant components of the MMA are still being stubborn about wanting one human being per each separate office of COAS and president: General Musharraf should decide between being president or army chief.

In terms of the power equation as we knew it, the president and the army chief were usually able to cooperate about checking and unbalancing the prime minister. But when it was a question of divergence between the president and the COAS, the COAS survived, whether it was Ghulam Ishaq or Farooq Leghari bowing out. In a system where the president’s political authority is primarily militarily derived, authority is more than likely to remain latent with the military in the case of a division, making the presidential robes of office as ornamental as the prime minister’s currently are. Seen this way the LFO is actually the serving president’s problem, as it is he who may suffer in any sudden switch to a presidential system. An LFO-subservient parliament has very little at stake, other than a chance to milk the democratic cow.

Why should the army chief be dependent on maintaining democratic rather than martial form? We need only recall the 1958 sequence of events after the presidential proclamation of martial law, when President Iskander Mirza had very soon to give way to General Ayub to find an explanation. An abolition and substitution signifies a failure of the ‘ system’ displaced. The ‘ system’ in place is identified with General Musharraf.

Of deeper import than the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, or the controversial content of the LFO, is the matter of the orientation of those framing such ordinances and offering or withholding parliamentary approval. This orientation is an enduring one that first produced and then nurtured Pakistan’s dire political straits. It regards custodianship of political power as a patent for personal gratification. Those entrusted with (or appropriating) public authority have never seen beyond their noses. Whether it was the dilatory first constituent assembly; the trailblazing governor-general who dismissed a prime minister and dissolved a house; the precedent-setting judiciary that upheld such action; or the archetypal army interventionist, self-interest in gaining and retaining offices of power has been definitive. Blame for our democratic collapse has to be apportioned, not just between those who emerge through the electoral process to sit in parliament and form governments, but between the executive, legislative and judicial arms of government and military command as well. What is really at stake in the tussle over the LFO is the will to change this pervading commitment to self-perpetuation. As long as our COAS-President’s concept of consensus is rather one of “ I have made up my mind. Now agree with me or get lost,” the difficulties regarding consensus are as much of his making as any parliamentary dissenter’s.

If General Musharraf and his supporters and detractors continue to view the political scene in simplistic terms, we will be badly stuck. For many Pakistanis, certainly for enough to make it foolish to ignore, Benazir Bhutto, the Sharifs and other exiled leaders signify a genuine political choice. Denied access to their chosen leadership, people have become frustrated and dispirited, precluding a healthy vibrant society.The panacea of an economic boom in such circumstances could have unexpectedly negative side-effects. Pakistan’s collectively induced democratic collapse cannot be righted except collectively. We cannot sweep away the rubble and pluck new building-blocks out of the air, as the last three years have clearly shown. The polarization between Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif gravely injured the body politic. General Musharraf’s polarization vis-a-vis both those persons is potentially far more damaging. He must face the fact that legal semantics cannot redeem or whitewash democratic tampering any better than uniformed might. For the ultimate decision about what we take out of or leave in the LFO and how we do it, is whether we opt for a civil democratic polity or an authoritarian military one.

If we settle for the second option, we must be aware it is a compromise that blocks up the wellsprings of the founding spirit of the country and be prepared for a fearsome future.