RULING politicians and generals like to scare us periodically with the assertion that the country is faced with a crisis. What is a crisis?

Generally speaking, an unexpected and radical turn of events that threatens the most vital interests of a person, organization, or the state may be called a crisis. It is transient; if it is protracted, it ceases to be a crisis and becomes the normal state of affairs.

A couple of examples should do. When our stockpiles of ammunition came close to the point of exhaustion after three weeks of fighting the war with India in September 1965, while the Indian supplies would last another two to three months, we got into a crisis from which the Chinese extricated us by sending their famous ultimatum to the Indian government.

The civil war in 1971 threw the lives and fortunes of the political forces and the people in East Pakistan into a state of crisis, but the same cannot be said to have happened to the rulers in Islamabad or the politicians in West Pakistan. When Ziaul Haq visited horrible atrocities upon the PPP leaders and workers, the party faced a crisis. But that same crisis brought a measure of gratification to the PML, Jamaat-i-Islami, and several other political parties in the country. A crisis for one is not necessarily a crisis for all.

Less dramatic situations may also be referred to as crises. The president and the prime minister develop a difference of opinion with regard to their respective jurisdictions, and the business of government at certain levels comes to a halt. A constitutional crisis may then be said to have arisen.

Politicians in the ARD, MMA, PPP, and PML (N) have been alleging for the last several months that General Musharraf has placed the country in the throes of a grave crisis. The general, and leaders of PML (Q) and MQM maintain that there is no crisis to be contended with, and that the opposition politicians are attempting to create one for the sake of their vested interests.

Let us see what the reality on the ground is. For the ordinary citizen the business of life goes on as usual. Stores are full of merchandize and shoppers. While the wealthy spend lavishly, the poor continue to suffer malnutrition and disease. Higher civil servants as well as their clerks go to their offices late, drink tea, chat with visitors, make personal telephone calls, take breaks for prayers and, if the spirit moves them and time permits, they may look at some of the files that have been piling up on their desks and floors. Other public authorities are working as well, or as poorly, as they normally do. Where then is the crisis?

One of the public institutions has indeed been thrown into disarray. Opposition members have not allowed the National Assembly to perform its appointed function. They have accomplished this result largely through disorderly conduct on the floor of the house. They have stopped debate by drowning the Speaker’s voice and that of the treasury spokesmen in the torrent of their own shouts and screams. They have violated parliamentary procedure every step of the way on the pretext of reasserting the parliament’s dignity and supremacy.

But their tactics have accomplished nothing. Public business has not been left in abeyance because of the lack of an enabling law. General Musharraf has been issuing ordinances, having the force of law, as and when needed. No one is giving his action a second thought. We have traditionally been ruled as much by ordinances as by laws made by assemblies. The opposition’s success in thwarting the National Assembly has brought them, and possibly that institution as well, into disrepute. They have made it look like a do-nothing entity. Their conduct is fraught with many a hazard.

The political mood of our people has swung between democracy and military rule more than once. They cheered Ayub Khan when he threw out the whole apparatus of democratic governance in 1958. They tired of his dictatorship, and then of his “guided democracy,” and eventually forced him out. They received Zulfikar Ali Bhutto with a good deal of warmth when he took power in December 1971. He lost support very quickly because his version of democracy had disillusioned many of them. His ouster at the hands of Ziaul Haq did not provoke a popular uprising. Again, no tears were shed when General Musharraf overthrew Nawaz Sharif.

Given this record, the opposition politicians may inadvertently be preparing the ground for their own demise. The impression they are spreading is disastrous. In addition to the regular meetings, they have requisitioned sessions of the National Assembly and then prevented it from doing any business. They receive their salaries, subsidized housing in Islamabad, “TA” and “DA” (travel and daily allowances) and other perquisites. Bringing them together in the Assembly costs the taxpayers tons of money. Yet they do no work, certainly not the work for which they were elected.

They are, unwittingly, preparing public opinion to accept their dismissal. This would not require the president’s resort to the controversial Article 58-2(b) of the Constitution. The prime minister might be persuaded to advise him to dissolve the National Assembly and call for new elections, in which case his action would not be vulnerable to judicial challenge and reversal.

One may wonder what new elections, so soon after the last ones, will accomplish. Some observers maintain that the unusually large electoral victory of the Islamic parties in 2002 distorted the normal composition of our assemblies. Their success may be attributed largely to the other parties’ reticence over the American killing of a great many Pukhtoons next door in Afghanistan.

The odium of American military operation in Iraq has now been added to that of the moves in Afghanistan, and the stink is likely to continue for several years. The MMA continues to condemn it while the parties aligned with General Musharraf prefer to remain quiet. Note also that the MMA governments in the NWFP and Balochistan have not ruled long enough for their misdirected policies and incompetence to have registered with the voters vividly enough. New elections may then produce merely a repeat of the 2002 results.

It has been said also that the exclusion of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, leaders of the “mainstream” parties, produced crookedness in the election results last year, and that if these leaders are allowed back in the country’s electoral politics, the results next time will be more wholesome. Perhaps. But the operating fact is that as long as General Musharraf has charge of our affairs, these leaders are not likely to be allowed back.

Parties to the dispute, which has allegedly caused a “crisis,” have been proceeding in an intriguing — in some cases, incredible — fashion. The dispute arises from the opposition’s rejection of all, or parts, of the general’s Legal Framework Order (LFO) of 2002. Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan and some of his colleagues in the ARD say that they will not negotiate with the government until General Musharraf steps down. They take this position even while knowing that he has no intention of obliging them. Who is then their audience? They say the country needs a movement, similar to the MRD (Movement for the Restoration of Democracy launched during the early years of Ziaul Haq’s rule), to get rid of the general.

This sounds like an exercise in futility. It may be useful to recall that the MRD did not force Ziaul Haq to quit. It only invited his wrath to fall upon his real or suspected opponents. Second, the public’s attitude towards Musharraf is nowhere near as hostile as it was towards Ziaul Haq. There is little prospect then of the opposition leaders being able to organize a mass movement that is capable of expelling General Musharraf from our political scene.

MMA leaders say they cannot live with a president who wears the army chief’s uniform. In some versions they are willing to have him in that garb for two more years but no longer. Musharraf says he is sick and tired of the talk about his uniform and he doesn’t want to hear it any more. So, where do we go from here?

There are other points of contention relating to the LFO which, having been discussed in my earlier articles, can be left alone. The style of negotiation that has gone on does, however, merit a further word. Each side says it is flexible, willing to make concessions, but not at the cost of its principles. Good; one should not barter away one’s principles. What exactly are the principles that the opposition wants to defend? There is, for one, the norm of the military’s subordination to civilian authority mandated in democratic polities. It is wrong for the army chief to be president at the same time. It is wrong for the generals to force their way into the government’s decision-making forums via a “National Security Council.”

The MMA is willing to allow Musharraf his uniform for a period of time and, according to reports, it will accept the NSC if it is brought into being through an act of parliament instead of a constitutional provision. If so, the relevant principle is evidently abandoned. Why not then go an extra mile and accept Musharraf’s terms instead of plunging the country in a crisis?

The government, on its part, also claims to be flexible. Yet we have not heard of any important concessions it is willing to make. The president’s uniform, NSC, retirement of judges upon reaching the age named in the pre-LFO version of the 1973 Constitution, reserved seats for women, joint electorate — all of them — are said to be non-negotiable. Where then is the flexibility?

Inescapable indeed is the impression that the negotiations between the government and the opposition are no more than a farce. There is no crisis to resolve, and the two sides are not even making a serious effort to overcome their differences, such as these may be.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA. syed.anwar@comcast.com

IN a parliamentary democracy, the prime minister is the leader of the house, the speaker conducts its proceedings and is custodian of the rights of all its members. Mr Zafarullah Jamali has not been able to lead the National Assembly, nor speaker Amir Husain has been able to run it.

The parliamentary tradition demands that both should quit their posts. Tradition here has the force of law and respected more than the law. That is the price practitioners of this most sophisticated form of government must pay when they cannot make it work. Further, the members opposed to the government choose a leader of their own to articulate their collective viewpoint. The disparate groups in the opposition, not trusting each other and some even bargaining to join the treasury benches, have not been able to agree on who should lead them.

Mr Jamali continues to be the leader of the house though he is unable to lead it, the opposition remains stubborn but leaderless and the speaker, though his rulings are drowned in shouts, has chosen not to invoke his powers to enforce discipline nor, perhaps, he ever would be able to alter his ruling on the Legal Framework Order. It was naive of him to try to interpret a hotly contested constitutional point which even the supreme court is wary of doing.

The traditions which lie at the heart of a parliamentary government thus disregarded, it cannot be helped but to fall back on the basic law to resolve the nine-month old deadlock which is costly and disgraceful at the same time.

The president is required to summon the National Assembly to meet “for not less than 130 working days in each year” and also to address its first session after the general election. These are the mandatory provisions of articles 54 and 56 of the Constitution. The president has not so far addressed the NA and it may not complete 130 days of meeting even if it were to remain in session for the remaining part of the year.

These violations of the Constitution, on the face of it, are incurable. A doubt thus already hangs over National Assembly’s legal existence while it meets. Even if the constitutional advisers of the government and a helpful supreme court are able to go round it, the National Assembly has lost whatever little moral and popular sanction it had to represent the people or to legislate for them in the face of low turn-out, rigged polls and subsequent horse-trading. President Musharraf also must admit the total failure of his constitutional experiment. The toll it is taking of the patience and money of the people and international credibility of the country is too high for the president’s vanity to stand in the way of going back to the people.

If the president dissolves the NA under article 58(2)(b) which he safely can as the government is indeed not working in accordance with the Constitution (with LFO as its part), the general election will be called afresh which, in all likelihood, will yield a result no different and perhaps no better than the last one. No single party will get the majority. The divisions might become sharper among factions more numerous but less scrupulous.

The next step therefore has to be like casting a die — either the country has an unshackled parliamentary government or we switch over to the presidential form. A contrived mix of the two hasn’t worked in the past nor is it working now nor would it work if tried yet again.

The individuals and families, clans and castes that are well entrenched and the idealists would prefer to revert to a pure parliamentary system. To them the only contentious point is the power of the president to dissolve the NA without the advice of the prime minister. The masses disillusioned by the shaky, or military, governments of the past culminating in the current grotesque combination of the two, on the other hand, yearn for a dispensation which brings stability and checks growing violence and poverty.

The choice, as in the past, perhaps would rest with the president and his commanders and not with the politicians or the people. Nevertheless, the parliament that comes into being as a result of fresh elections should also work as the constituent assembly. If the president in adding LFO to the Constitution has gone beyond the powers the supreme court gave him, the present ragtag parliament has no popular mandate either to reverse or to affirm it.

Gen Musharraf has now himself pronounced failure of his ideas and doings of the past four years by admitting that the country stands at the crossroads (i.e. the people are baffled) and the religious extremists, though few, hold the people hostage. If Musharraf really expects, as he says, the moderate majority to stand up and be counted, his negotiators and prime minister instead of making that possible are working to the contrary.

All that Messers Jamali and Shujaat are doing to get the parliament and their government going is to persuade the MMA religious alliance to endorse the LFO in a much-diluted form. Though the alliance remains ever so stubborn and is often accused of retracting, no effort is made by the government to reach an understanding with the relatively moderate and more representative ARD. In fact Mr Jamali told an Urdu daily only last week that he had nothing to do with the ARD and it was up to its head, Nawabzada Nasrullah, to decide whatever he liked.

The MMA may not be an alliance of extremists but what is schism in theology becomes sectarian when it enters politics. That lies at the root of violent extremism in Pakistan’s public life. If the religious parties become allies of the Jamali government their known physical and sentimental links with the Taliban of Afghanistan are already exchanging protests and gunfire alleging the use of their soils by hostile elements.

It would be both awkward and ludicrous if Pakistan’s deputy prime minister (which Maulana Fazlur Rahman is expected to be if his alliance agrees to support the government) is not permitted to enter Afghanistan and Qazi Husain Ahmad refuses to go to India which he says he wouldn’t till the Kashmir dispute is resolved. Pakistan’s economic and strategic stakes in the current dealings with India and Afghanistan (and to a lesser extent in Iran and Central Asian republics) are too high to be risked in this manner. And, further, whenever America abandons its war on terror either as a costly, unproductive undertaking or can win it without Pakistan’s front-end role, it might start accusing Pakistan of hosting terrorists if the patrons of Taliban and exponents of armed struggle in Kashmir form part of its government.

At this juncture when religious extremism is causing anxiety to President Musharraf, his prime minister has chosen to stoke it by paying a public tribute to the founder of this menace, Ziaul Haq, for his services to the security of Pakistan, making its defence impregnable and for spearheading jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir. This has surprised and saddened the moderate majority which so far felt assured that Jamali would stand behind them when they confront the extremist who are once again on a killing spree. Ziaul Haq, they believe, had given extremism a new dimension of intolerance and hatred only to prolong and buttress his tyrannical rule.

But then Mr Jamali also owes a debt to Zia for he had learnt to be humble from him. A thin line separates humility from hypocrisy. It was Zia’s so-called humility which persuaded Z.A. Bhutto to appoint him chief of army staff over the head of many abler but haughty generals. It was also in all humility that he dismissed, imprisoned to a skeleton and then hanged Bhutto.

If Jamali must copy a virtue in contending with his political adversaries it should be Jinnah’s hubris and straight forwardness and not Zia’s humility and guile. Whatever the manoeuvres the focus must remain on holding elections afresh and free without discrimination against any party. At present neither Musharraf nor Jamali nor MMA or ARD represents the will of the people or interests of the country. If the government is now contemplating, as the latest reports suggest, to wean more members away from the opposition to make up the required number at the cost of ethics and exchequer, it would only hasten the demise of a parliament which was never much representative and is also turning violent and vulgar.

WHEN does a charm offensive become more offensive than charming? It is a judgment call, obviously. What defines the difference? Trust. If the charm is sincere, no offence. But if the charm is only as slippery as oil, then someone will end up on the floor, with less than salubrious consequences.

President Pervez Musharraf has a remarkable quality for a military ruler: two summers ago, he had editors at Agra eating out of his hand instead of concentrating on their breakfast, and he turned hard-boiled politicians into soft-boiled yolks when he met them some days ago at Islamabad. It is easy to be cynical for a non-participant, or even a participant.

I do recall the only question I asked President Musharraf at the famous, or infamous, Agra breakfast: after submitting that I was impressed by the fact that a visiting general had offered homage to Mahatma Gandhi, the symbol of non-violence, I asked Pakistan’s leader whether he would be as committed to non-violence if the Agra summit failed a few hours later. The summit failed, non-violence disappeared out of the window and last year at this time a nuclear shadow loomed so large over South Asia that American think-tanks began body-counts in their projections.

Some of the analogies being drawn by the Pakistan leadership as yet another momentum builds towards peace are too disingenuous to last the course. There is the rather self-pitying suggestion that India is the ‘Big Brother’, or at least the ‘Bigger Nation’, and must therefore show greater magnanimity over Kashmir. This sits ill with the rhetoric as well as the reality of the last five decades. Pakistan has and should frame its discourse within the concept of equality, and nothing else.

Pakistan is too big to be a small nation. More to the point, small and big are geographical facts, not political realities. Israel is smaller than Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and Syria, and yet militarily more powerful than all of them put together. We who have been ruled by Britain should know this best. Britain was no more than the size of a province, but ruled subcontinents in Asia and Africa. There is a tinge of self-pity about this big-small equation that erodes respect. Of the many points that Musharraf made in his well-prepared verbal encounter with Indian politicians and journalists, this was certainly the most hollow. It was not even good enough to be insincere.

But the reason why President Musharraf impresses visitors is because he has missed his vocation. He should have been a lawyer. No one argues a case more convincingly, leaving out the uncomfortable facts, or finding seemingly reasonable justifications for them. When he insists, for instance, that a dialogue for peace between India and Pakistan could begin “tomorrow” he does not dwell on why India does not start talking “tomorrow”. He finesses the fact that cross-border terrorism has not stopped (even Independence Day saw its quota of death) with the silken thrust that if it was so easy to stop terrorism he would have been able to prevent the terrorist attack that left more than 50 Shias dead in a Quetta mosque. And then adds that life is a seesaw — terrorists (“freelancers...mujahideen...or whatever you want to call them”) get encouraged by the absence of peace, so it is all the more important to start a dialogue that will bring India and Pakistan closer.

Such advocacy is easily answered. It is perfectly true that you cannot bring terrorism under control easily, or eliminate it with the wave of some wand. If it was easy, India would not have struggled in Punjab and Kashmir for as long as it has done, and the United States of America would not have found it necessary to bomb, invade and occupy two nations at a cost that is slowly taking on the proportions of a wave.

The issue is not terrorism but trust. Here is a simple test for President Musharraf. When Washington asks for a suspect living in Pakistan in its war against terrorism, the suspect, if found, is handed over without much fuss. The noun one has used is ‘suspect’, which means that the person concerned has not been tried and proven guilty before being handed over to American authorities. Why is a self-declared terrorist operating against India protected by the Musharraf government? Would the Lashkar-i-Tayyaba have been able to proudly claim in its official publication that it had launched a particular attack against an American army unit in Pakistan or Afghanistan, and escaped American vengeance and Islamabad compliance?

But the real reason why President Musharraf invites serious attention is because when he takes a position publicly, and on the record, then it becomes what might be called a political fact. He made two important points on August 12, both of which must be considered to constitute Pakistan’s policy. After the obligatory argument that peace was better than war, he averred that both sides needed to show flexibility over Kashmir and move away from past positions. He may not have said it in precise words, but he indicated clearly enough that plebiscite was a dead option. This can be extended to eliminating the United Nations, for the UN becomes relevant only if there is a plebiscite.

It is not a terribly secret secret that if there had been an Agra Declaration two years ago, as there almost was, there would have been no reference to the United Nations in the document. This would have been the first time that Pakistan would have signed a pact with India without referring to the United Nations. The solution of the Kashmir problem through bilateral means, which has always been the Indian position, has therefore been accepted as the only way forward.

If therefore the “will of the Kashmiri people” has to be determined, as Islamabad still claims it must, then other means have to be found. This opens its own range of possibilities, even as it closes options that a group like the Hurriyat in Jammu and Kashmir clings on to. A solution has not been found, nor will it be found in any hurry, but space has been created. That is one small step for Islamabad, but a huge stride for South Asia.

The second offer made by President Musharraf was to nail down specifics that would calm the border and discourage violence. Some of it was straightforward: an immediate end to the shelling across the ceasefire line. Some of it was disingenuous: release of “political prisoners” by Delhi, force reduction in the valley. Some of it was repetitive: let the Hurriyat travel to Pakistan. And some of it was actually self-exposure.

As for instance when President Musharraf suggested that the “mujahideen” could stop operations if there was a parallel end to military operations by India. If President Musharraf can talk on behalf of the “mujahideen” then ipso facto he has some control over their operations. Which in turn proves that the Pakistan government is not as distant from them as it pretends to be. The “mujahideen” are not going to take dictation from those who provide only “moral” support.

But whatever the nuances of the offer, the one thing it did not deserve was the response that Delhi gave almost before it was made. Here is a broad rule for diplomatic manners. When spokesmen jerk their knee they should learn to smile when they hit their chin. It is not necessary to look defiantly grim in disagreement, as if it were some terrible personal battle. There is a mature way of dealing with disagreement. The best instance came when we were in Pakistan. In another speech President Musharraf suggested that the time had come to rearrange the structure of Saarc so that bilateral issues could also be discussed in that forum. Our ambassador in Islamabad, Shiv Shankar Menon, was asked for a comment. “We are always open to ideas,” he answered. Perfect. The external affairs spokesman in Delhi could have said precisely that, with a smile, and left the exercise of options to his superiors.

If he had waited for three days, he would also have learnt what his superiors thought. Peace with Pakistan, without compromise on fundamentals, was at the centre of one of the finest speeches delivered from the ramparts of the Red Fort in recent times. On Independence Day, Prime Minister Atal Behari was cogent, lucid, clear and forceful. But if he had a message for our neighbour, it was less in what he said about the Indo-Pakistan relationship and more in what he said about India.

Ten years ago, there did not seem much difference between India and Pakistan as you travelled that great road conceived by Sher Shah Suri, and consolidated by every succeeding generation, an artery that is truly the grand trunk of the subcontinent. But now the difference is becoming visible. Pakistan’s economy is chained to conflict, and its people are getting restive. More than half the budget disappears in a single line that no one dare discuss. There is no cow holier than the “defence” budget. A substantial portion of the rest goes in debt repayment and cost of government (the army does not pay from its pocket for the administration of the country it rules).

Less than 10 per cent is left for developmental spending, with barely two per cent spent on education. It is not a scenario designed for sending missions to the moon, and the young Pakistani knows it. There is an impatience in the land, as the army takes control of every aspect of life and becomes an all-consuming dictatorship. This subterranean anger is not personal, in the sense that it is not directed against Musharraf; but it is institutional. Those in power know that they can use patriotism to justify that single-line budget entry up to a point, and that point is coming nearer.

Imperatives will create peace, if we are to achieve it. Goodwill is simply not good enough, even if there was much sincere goodwill available. Peace will come when the people shape the moment, when a child called Noor is the source of change, and teenagers are greeting with the special rapture that the young reserve for their own, melting borders with their warmth and teasing armies with their laughter. Peace will come when governments learn to follow the people.

The writer is editor-in-chief, Asian Age, New Delhi.