GENERAL Musharraf intends to seek a second term as president, and it appears also that he expects to be elected by the present parliament and provincial assemblies. The legal and moral status of these proposed moves is being debated, and several interesting points have come up.

He took the oath of office as president first when he eased Mr Rafiq Tarar out of the presidency on June 20, 2001. He took the same oath again sometime after the dubious referendum of April 2001. The two houses of parliament and the provincial assemblies, comprising the presidential electoral college, passed a “vote of confidence” in him, thus confirming him in office, and authorised him to hold it until November 15, 2007. Unless my remembrance is faltering, he took the oath, for the third time, following this vote. This multiplicity of oath-taking has caused confusion as to when exactly his term as president should be deemed to have begun and when, accordingly, it should be deemed to be due to end.

A bit of reflection should enable us to see that a vote of confidence in the holder of an office may have the effect of confirming him in that office, but it is not the same as electing him to it. If the vote of confidence that the electoral college passed in his favour is then not to be construed as an election, it follows that General Pervez Musharraf has never really been elected, and that he has been a self-appointed president all along.

Commentators disagree on whether the present assemblies are entitled to elect the next president. Some of them argue that they can serve as an electoral college only once in their one term. I have found nothing in the Constitution to support this assertion.

The issue of the general’s uniform continues to haunt the proponents of democracy. The parliament and the Supreme Court have said that he may keep his army post even while he serves as president, but it is not clear whether this authorisation covers his present term only or if it might also extend to a second term.

It may be instructive to ask what advantages accrue to him as president from his role as the army chief. In other words, what precisely is it that he is able to do by keeping these two offices concurrently, which he would not be able to do if he were to quit his army post? Not so long ago, he told an interviewer that his authority as president would diminish if he were no longer the army chief. One may wonder what kind of authority he has in mind. It cannot pertain to the exercise of powers and functions that the Constitution allows him. He is actually talking not about “authority” but about his ability to do things that lie beyond his lawful authority, his ability to select at will and direct operations in the day-to-day business of the government, which are by law and convention the prime minister’s business and none of his. How does he get away with these intrusions in the country’s governance?

It is a fair assumption that, when necessary, he reminds the prime minister and the PML notables, that it is the civil and military agencies under his command that managed their trip to power, and that they can just as readily return them to the wilderness from where he had picked them up. The same agencies can also make life miserable for them. Furthermore, he can threaten to dismiss them and, if pushed, even bring about another coup and throw out the entire political apparatus.

If this is a credible reading of the ground realities, one must regretfully conclude that General Musharraf’s retention of his army post serves the purpose mainly of enabling him to operate a system of rule that relies upon intimidation as its principal instrument.

Consider another aspect of this matter. Given the army’s tradition of honouring the chain of command, Musharraf as the army chief can order deployment of troops at places, and in situations, as he deems expedient. These measures may initially be open to debate in staff meetings, but after all has been said, he will have the last word and it will be carried out. If he gives up his army post, his successor may, sooner than later, begin to have a mind of his own.

Let us now turn to the moral and political implications of General Musharraf’s intentions. Considering that their existence is not under challenge in the courts, the present assemblies may be deemed to be lawfully constituted. But since the elections that produced them are believed to have been largely rigged, enabling many of their members to cheat their way to office, their legitimacy as an electoral college is open to question. Their act of electing a president would then likewise be wanting in legitimacy and so would be the entitlement to office of the person elected.

Government in Pakistan has been ineffective for extended periods of time because, having come into being through intrigue, seduction, and corruption, it lacked legitimacy and fell in public esteem. Its writ was often ignored because it was not respected. Its lack of legitimacy intensified corruption in the polity and society. It also made for political instability. It seems to me that a positive public perception of the rulers’ legitimacy is an imperative of good governance, which Pakistan has lacked for a long time, including the period of General Musharraf’s rule. Must this shabby state of affairs continue?

Contrary to one’s first impression, authoritarian governments, including those run or dominated by the military, are not necessarily good and strong; In our own experience, each one of them has been both unwise and politically ineffective. Ayub Khan took us into an unnecessary war with India (1965), which we did not win, and which aggravated East Pakistan’s already simmering disaffection with the union. Yahya Khan’s shortsightedness led to the country’s dismemberment. Ziaul Haq’s rule spread corruption, extremism, sectarian and ethnic violence. It generated terrorism, and in numerous other ways ruined the country.

General Musharraf’s politics (his nurturing of, PML-Q, including its notoriously corrupt elements, and his government’s complicity in electoral rigging at both the national and local levels) has encouraged polarisation and conflict in the polity. Those cheated out of elective office as a result of rigging and subsequent intrigue are, as one might expect, alienated. Few, if any, pay attention to the government’s writ. We have virtually a civil war on our hands in north and south Waziristan. A devastating revolt has paralysed Balochistan. Turmoil in Sindh is, if anything, on the increase. Many observers of the political scene in Pakistan attribute all of this to the absence of the basic minimum condition of genuine democracy, that is, reasonably fair and honest elections.

The abominable thing about the present assemblies electing the next president is the deal that will most likely form the basis of this transaction. PML-Q and its allies, who have a majority in the electoral college, will offer to elect General Musharraf and sustain his style of rule during his second term on the understanding that his regime, including the “agencies” under his control, will “enable” them to win the next election with a good majority.

What shall we propose for General Musharraf to do in case he can be persuaded to follow the straight and narrow path of political rectitude? His current term, regardless of when it is deemed to have begun, expires on November 15, 2007. The Constitution requires a presidential election at least 30 days before the present incumbent’s term ends, which takes us to October 15. If the present assemblies are still sitting at that time, they will have to be the ones to elect the next president. But if the prime minister can be persuaded to request it, they can be dissolved and sent home sometime before that date. The general can, under the Constitution, continue to function as president until the new assemblies are in place and elect his successor (he himself or someone else).

It is hard to say if the assemblies resulting from a fair and honest election will re-elect the general as president. There may be a fair chance of their doing so if he resigns his army post and undertakes to limit himself to exercising only such powers and functions as the Constitution allows him. But if he does not meet these conditions, the chances of his reelection by these new assemblies may be poor; their composition is hard to predict at this time, but PML (Q) will most likely not have a commanding position in any of them. Even this party may not be willing to go with the general on his terms if it has won by its own devices and not through his.

How will General Musharraf fare if he retires and goes home? Winston Churchill once wrote that “dictators go about riding tigers which they dare not dismount.” The general is reputed to be an honest man with his heart (if not always his mind) in the right place, and he has not been quite the tyrant that a typical dictator often is. If he were to dismount the “baby tiger” he has been riding, can he expect to be left alone to live in peace and comfort?

Nothing will be gained by waving Article 6 of the Constitution (which says coup makers are guilty of high treason) in front of him as Mr Nawaz Sharif has done several times. Nor will it serve any useful purpose to threaten probes into past coups and debacles like Kargil as the ARD’s “charter of democracy” does. It would indeed be in the fitness of things if the opposition politicians and all others concerned were to say that they intended, in the country’s larger interest, to leave the past alone and “let bygones be bygones.”

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US. Email: anwarsyed@cox.net

THE government has appointed a national commission “with the objective of providing a modern, efficient and accountable system of governance on a sustainable basis”. The former State Bank governor, Ishrat Husain, will head the commission which will have nine members (six of them will be working on a full-time basis) and more may be co-opted.

The broad range of the task given to the commission suggests that it will remain in existence much beyond the present term of parliament and the president. Though the commission’s terms of reference cover the whole gamut of state (and not just government) functions and responsibilities, the reasons that have prompted its formation seem to be to resolve the confusion and conflict created by the hastily conceived and arbitrarily imposed devolution plan.

Way back in 1969, General Yahya Khan, having summarily dismissed hundreds of public servants in the first flush of power, was quick to realise that many honest and competent people, too, had been shown the door. He asked his defence secretary, Nazir Ahmad, to review the dismissals to undo the wrong. Nazir Ahmad’s response was simple and straightforward. Every one should be reinstated and only then would he scrutinise and recommend who among them deserved to be dismissed.

How one wishes General Musharraf, too, were similarly advised to undo his arbitrary devolution plan and restore the system and the laws as they stood at the turn of the century and then let the cabinet and the legislature decide, on the recommendation of Ishrat Husain’s commission, what reforms were needed for the safety and well-being of the people and that would satisfy the provinces.

But the age of Nazir Ahmad is long past. He was, as Musharraf’s National Reconstruction Bureau put it, a “colonial relic” but he spoke for a system in which decisions were made by the institutions through a deliberative process and not handed down by an individual who had his own set of preferences and prejudices.

No doubt, the administrative structure that the NRB pulled down had a British impression (Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh prefers to call it the “proud legacy” of the empire) but it had evolved over 500 years. Its foundations were laid, as Humayun Khan noted in this space last Tuesday, by the Mughal emperor Akbar. The British continued using, and we still use, the instruments and procedures introduced by Akbar. The system needed modifications and the men running it gave it a new orientation but only through a process of the type that Musharraf’s government has belatedly initiated.

The scope of the commission’s investigations and recommendations is so vast and varied that, the breadth of the knowledge and experience of its members notwithstanding, it is doubtful that the goods will be delivered, even in a lifetime. Our political and administrative institutions and procedures have some basic flaws and more have crept in with the passage of time or through pressures exerted by vested interests. But the remedies applied by the NRB have made it worse.

The fundamental flaws in our political structure are just two: first, the provinces do not have enough powers and control over their own resources to meet the basic needs of the people but must still address the aspirations of the ethnic communities; and, second, the people at the grassroots level lack a sense of participation in their own civic and developmental affairs. It is an irony that the district boards and municipalities that worked quite effectively in colonial times were allowed to weaken after independence as their functions were usurped by legislators and the bureaucracy.

The failings in the administrative structure are more procedural and man-made. Over time, the superior all-Pakistan services lost their merit and neutrality but preserved their exclusiveness. Their very raison d’etre was lost when they became as vulnerable, if not more, to political and corrupt influences as their subordinate cadres who were at least more accessible.

The NRB came up with biased excuses with respect to both political and administrative failings. It did well to revive the local councils but went on to assign them almost every function that belonged to the provincial government and thus made them rivals in a head-on clash. While the clamour was for greater provincial autonomy, under the NRB’s scheme even the district governments have passed under the control of the federal government. The constant tussle between the provincial and district governments has made the central government an arbiter and broker in their affairs, undermining whatever little autonomy the provinces had.

The Police Order, promulgated in 2002 under the devolution scheme, sought to protect the police from political interference and also to free it from the “general control and direction” of the district magistrate (as was envisaged in the law of 1860) by placing the force under a “public safety commission”. The government has not found it possible in five years to form this commission because of the defiant opposition of the chief ministers who are not prepared to give up their control over the police. The centre is no longer insisting upon it. As elections and the task of taming the opposition approach, realpolitik has overtaken idle theories. In the meantime, the powers to post and transfer, punish or reward the police officials from inspector-general down to the SHO have all passed into the hands of the politicians.

Seeking to insulate the police from politics, the NRB’s administrative reforms have, in fact, made it an instrument of political power. Under the new arrangement, the head of the district police is responsible to the nazim. The local government scheme envisaged the nazims as being apolitical. In practice, they are powerful party bosses. Law and order, which is the first duty of the state and Pakistan’s aggravating problem, no longer has a neutral custodian after the abolition of the post of district magistrate. Even if it is granted that a nazim can be neutral, he has no executive hierarchy to back his authority. Under the police law, he cannot even inspect a police station. The administrative reforms have thus blurred the responsibility for law and order, and growing lawlessness is the result.

A distinctive feature of the commission is that, unlike the commissions of the past, it can recommend action to a steering committee, co-chaired by the president and the prime minister, from time to time as it proceeds with its investigations. The selection of issues that must rank high on its agenda is bound to be subjective, but there should be no two opinions that the reinstatement of a neutral law and order administration should rank as the highest, followed by the separation of municipal/developmental functions from executive authority — one belongs to elected representatives, the other to permanent civil servants.

In the final analysis, what would matter is whether the commission is free and objective in its investigations. If it is going to be just another “command” performance, as was the NRB’s, the people should be spared the agony of having expectations. To hold the government to its promise of good governance, the commission should ask for a role in supervising the filling of thousands of posts in the provinces on the basis of merit. It is widely suspected that these will go to relatives and cronies.