ON Nov 3 the fifth martial law was clamped on Pakistan by General Musharraf. It was for the first time in history that a military ruler had imposed martial law against his own rule.

The arguments he presented to justify his extra-constitutional action turned out to be a charge-sheet against his own person. If Pakistan was really on the brink of destabilisation then who is to be blamed? It was Musharraf who was at the helm of affairs for the last eight years. He had sweeping powers.

When he launched his coup against the elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Oct 12, 1999, after he was dismissed from the post of army chief in the wake of the Kargil crisis, he promised a panacea for all the problems faced by the nation in the form of a seven-point agenda. He promised the Supreme Court to implement this agenda within three years. After 9/11 he re-packaged himself as a warrior against extremism and terrorism and promised to purge all forms of extremism from the country.

After eight years, General Musharraf is now telling us that the relations between organs of state had become unmanageable and the wave of extremism had assumed alarming proportions. Instead of accepting his failure to deliver the much promised seven-point agenda and eradicate extremism, General Musharraf usurped the fundamental rights of 160 million citizens, the independence of the judiciary and freedom of media. He has put Pakistan on the title pages of major international papers and magazines not for any innovation, breakthrough, or miracle but for a crackdown on civil liberties.

His actions are serving those lobbies well which are all out to project Pakistan as a dangerous country. General Musharraf is telling the world that even after sixty years Pakistan cannot be governed by a constitution. The irony is that to justify his extra-constitutional step he quoted Abraham Lincoln, whose entire life was dedicated towards making rule of law the bedrock of the US federation. After this do we need external enemies?

Pakistan was created out of a historic democratic struggle by Muslims of South Asia under the dynamic leadership of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, an eminent constitutionalist, whose vision was to establish a modern Muslim state based on rule of law, social justice, and equal citizenship regardless of religion, caste, or creed. He categorically declared that the role of the military was restricted to defending geographic boundaries of the country.

But unfortunately after Mr. Jinnah’s demise and Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan’s assassination, an ambitious general, Ayub Khan, began intriguing to realise his ambitions. He abrogated the constitution by staging a coup in 1958 and showed the way to his successors, Yahya and Zia. On Oct 12, 1999 General Musharraf imposed the fourth martial law after he was dismissed as army chief. Initially he was under pressure from the international community but after 9/11 he jumped on to the bandwagon of the war against terror acquiring the role of a frontline state in the US war.

On Mar 9, he dismissed the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in a pre-emptive strike to safeguard his next term in office, a move which backfired resulting in an unprecedented struggle of lawyers, civil society, and political activists to get the chief justice restored. This gave the judiciary for the first time an aura of independence that raised public hopes that finally the ‘General-Judge-Jagirdar’ troika was about to break. This had held the state hostage since 1958. It was the finest moment of our history with the people’s confidence in the judiciary being restored.

What Musharraf called paralysis of the executive was actually a sense of accountability that overtook the top echelons of the administration for the first time. But this dream proved to be short lived as the judiciary and the media became the principal targets of his fifth martial law to show that the barrel of the gun was still heavier than the rule of law in Pakistan.

There are three clear motives behind the Nov 3 action. First, fear of a judgment against General Musharraf’s eligibility in uniform for the office of president. Secondly, apprehensions about securing desired results in the next election through rigging in the presence of an independent judiciary and media. Thirdly, the Supreme Court’s contempt proceedings in Nawaz Sharif’s deportation case in which clear evidence against the prime minister had come on record and the Supreme Court had directed the government to submit a written assurance before Nov 8 regarding the implementation of its judgment to allow Nawaz Sharif entry into Pakistan.

The questions which arise are: is General Musharraf above the law and the constitution? Can’t the Supreme Court give a decision against the head of state? Is the court only for the common man and the powerful and the mighty are outside its scope? Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) described the secret of the rise and fall of nations as being the application of their laws. Those who had separate laws for the common man and another set for the mighty could never succeed.

Is it not strange that here we have a system in which the president’s apprehension of a court ruling allows him to roll over the courts and constitution. Who has given one man the authority to be the final arbiter of national interest? Nations can endure poverty, malnutrition and hunger but no nation can survive without the supremacy of rule of law.

General Musharraf may be a necessity for President Bush but the Pakistani nation’s agenda is to achieve the supremacy of the constitution, an independent judiciary, free media and transparent democracy. The president has become incompatible with Pakistan’s agenda. These are defining moments for every Pakistani, who must decide whether he/she is on the side of the rule of law or dictatorship. If General Musharraf succeeds in thrusting a rigged election upon the nation then we will be pushed back to 1958 and all the sacrifices made for the independence of the judiciary will go in vain.

This battle is not about who will stay in power or who will come into power. It is about what legacy are we going to leave for our children. Will Pakistanis be entitled to self governance or will they remain colonised by the ambitions of one man? It is a testing moment for all those who have been blessed by this country with big offices, businesses, houses and titles. The poor are already struggling, with thousands of them facing the regime’s brutality on streets and in jails. Fifty judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts have shown the way by refusing to take the oath under Musharraf’s PCO. They should be brought back. Our future will depend on whether the privileged heed the call of their motherland or are guided by vested interests.

The writer is Secretary Information, PML-N, and a former Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission of Pakistan.

betterpakistan@gmail.com

MUHAMMAD Tughlaq (1325-1351) was an innovative ruler of India but he became very unpopular during the last days of his rule because of his brutal and repressive policies against his subjects and his harsh attitude towards his opponents. When rebellions broke out in every part of his kingdom, he failed to crush them.

Disappointed at his failure to restore his authority, he summoned Ziauddin Barani, the historian and author of the Tarikh-i-Firuzshai, one day. After talking about the problem he faced from the rebels and the bellicose behaviour of his enemies, Tughlaq asked Barani how rulers of the past handled such crises.

While giving his opinion, Barani said that in these circumstances either rulers retired from power and handed over the reins of government to their heir apparent or entrusted their ministers with the responsibility of governing on his behalf. They would plunge themselves in merry-making without bothering about the affairs of the state.

The sultan refused to follow Barani’s advice because it was a matter of prestige for him to assert his authority and not to retire from office after surrendering his powers to others. To him this would have been tantamount to an insult and an act of humiliation before his enemies. However, before long he died of exhaustion, a disappointed man. Barani commented on his death: “He got rid of people and people got rid of him.”

There is historical evidence that when power is concentrated in one man, it raises his status and transforms him into a superman, whose authority cannot be challenged or questioned. He perceives himself as a saviour of the nation and any opposition or rebellion against him is regarded as treason. Generally, every dictator has a vision in accordance with which he seeks to build the country and nation. For example, Napolean wanted to make France a great imperial power headed by him with great splendour and glory. Hitler’s ambition was to establish the superiority of the German race over all nations. Mussolini’s desire was to revive the glory of the Roman Empire.

There have also been dictators with ideological ambitions who strove to transform a society within an ideological framework. In most cases these were dictators who usurped power to glorify their person. They amassed wealth by hook or by crook and patronised their family members or their cronies at the cost of the public exchequer. When faced with opposition which they failed to crush they escaped to foreign countries along with their plundered wealth.

It is customary that having absolute power, dictators traditionally undermined the role of the state and its institutions making them loyal to his person and relegating the state to the backburner. They therefore shaped the bureaucracy, army, judiciary, special tribunals to try political opponents, secret agencies, police, and special armed squads in such a way that they operated under their direct control and were empowered to kidnap, torture, or kill the opponents.

The common practice was to throw dissidents in jail without trial. Police were given full authority to check any demonstration against the government and to disperse the crowd by using full force. Terror was the most effective instrument to silence people. According to Hitler, “Terror is an effective tool; people think twice before opposing us if they know what awaits them in the camps.” Dictators control all sources of information and keep people ignorant. State media provide only one point of view which suits the rulers.

Napoleon, in fact, provided a model for the modern dictator to rule and subdue people. As soon as he came to power he realised the importance of the press and propaganda. As a result of his policy, French newspapers published only the news of his victories and none of his defeat. For example, the defeat of Trafalgar was not published in any newspaper and the French remained ignorant of this event.

Censorship prohibited the publication of a large number of newspapers and magazines which did not carry the government’s point of view. Publishers were required to take an oath not to publish any material against Napoleon. He authorised the secret agencies and police to arrest his critics and keep them in prison without any trial.

During his rule, police entered the houses of dissidents, searched their belongings, and treated them harshly. To give his rule legitimacy, he held plebiscites which he won by majority votes. He also fully exploited the sentiments of patriotism to win popularity. Though he was not religious but to impress people he showed his religiosity to win their support.

This model was followed with more sophistication by Mussolini and Hitler. Germany under Hitler became a subservient state fully controlled by one political party (Sturm Abteilung). The SS (Schutz Staffel) and Gestapo were the terror organs which subdued people and made them subservient to the regime. In the beginning when the judges were reluctant to side with the Nazi party, Goering, a top leader and close friend of Hitler, told them bluntly: “You wait until we get you out of the court.” Hitler calmed him down and told him: “Mein Lieber Goering, it is only a question of time.” He fulfilled his promise as soon as he acquired power. In 1933 by a Civil Service law all the judges who were not ‘politically reliable’ were dismissed. The judiciary became a pliant tool in the hand of the Nazi regime to use it against its opponents.

In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, dictators followed this model more brutally. Marcos, Idi Amin, Pinochet, Suharto and the likes of them plundered and looted their own people and brazenly lived in luxury amidst poverty and misery. They suppressed any opposition against their rule and executed thousands and thousands of citizens to keep their grip tight. They made their countries intellectually barren, economically poor and dependent, and socially disintegrated.

Perhaps, as dictators they could have lived and died in peace but history did not spare them for their crimes. They were placed at the lowest category with those who brought disaster, sufferings, and darkness to the common man. People preferred to forget them rather than remember them, as their memories are painful. They just disappear along with their crimes from the pages of history books, leaving no trace in the collective memories of people.

JUNE 12, 1975 is a date that still reverberates in India, over three decades later. On that day, Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court set aside the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s election to the Lok Sabha from Rae Bareli. Sinha found her guilty of ‘corrupt electoral practices’, following an election petition by the man she had defeated in the 1971 general election, Raj Narain.

Though the conviction was on minor and technical grounds (her private secretary had become her election agent before he had effectively resigned from government service and she had used government help to build the rostrums at her election meetings), it debarred her from elective office for six years. The verdict was subject to appeal in the Supreme Court, yet it stunned the country.

Indira Gandhi’s response to the judgment was in keeping with her imperious nature. She later told Dom Moraes, who wrote her biography, that she decided to stay in office after the judgment because the nation was ‘in peril from both internal and external enemies’ and that there was nobody else around who could deal with the ‘grave threat’. In other words, she was indispensable. She had been in virtually undisputed power for a decade since the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri just after the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war and in 1971 achieved her greatest moment of glory with the creation of Bangladesh and the surrender of the Pakistan army in Dhaka. So, her belief as her country’s saviour was perhaps understandable.

The other factor was her younger son, Sanjay, a thug-like school drop-out, who had been making full use of his mother’s position to promote a small-car project and who would stand most to lose. He would be the main force goading his mother to remain in power.

Meanwhile, she appealed to the Supreme Court against Justice Sinha’s verdict and pleaded for an unconditional stay of it. V.R. Krishna Iyer, the Supreme Court’s Vacation Judge (the full Court was on a six-week summer vacation), ruled on Jun 24 that she could stay in office and speak in Parliament but until the appeal was decided, could not vote in Parliament. The opposition, led by her bete noire, Jaiprakash Narayan (popularly known as JP), was jubilant, calling for her resignation. JP even asked the army, the police and the bureaucracy not to ‘obey’ and to ‘abide by the Constitution’.

But Indira had already decided to strike back, with the help of Siddharth Shankar Ray, chief minister of West Bengal, close family friend and prominent lawyer. On the night of Jun 25, she, along with Ray, went to Rashtrapati Bhavan, the ceremonial home of India’s President, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, to tell him that her government had decided to impose a ‘state of internal emergency’. The rubber-stamp president whom she had installed in office signed the proclamation of emergency, without demur.

JP, Morarji Desai (who would later become prime minister) and other opposition leaders were either put under house arrest or into jail. The power lines along Bahadurshah Zafar Marg, where most of the national papers are published, were cut, so that no paper could come out the next morning and the public would not get to know of the arrests. Most Indians only learnt of the emergency from a BBC radio broadcast at 7.30am on Jun 26. Half an hour later, Indira said on the government-controlled All India Radio: “The president has declared a state of emergency. There is no need to panic.” Censorship rules, more severe than under the Raj, were imposed on the press.

I was then the editor of the Reader’s Digest. My parent American edition carried a scathingly critical piece by Claire Sterling, a renowned journalist, on Indira Gandhi, after she had imposed her ‘emergency’ rule. Though the Indian edition did not use it, the Reader’s Digest came close to being expelled from India. I had to personally take all the contents of every issue for vetting by a government censor, before publication. Barring a few notable exceptions – A.D. Gorwala, a former member of the Indian civil service, who bravely continued to attack Indira Gandhi in his publication, Opinion, and Ramnath Goenka, the redoubtable owner of the Indian Express, being the most prominent – the Indian press caved in.

In the obituary columns of the Times of India, a protest was sneaked in. It announced the death on Jun 25 (the day the ‘emergency’ was declared) of “O’Cracy. Dem” and was sent by “the husband of T.Ruth, father of L.I.Berty, brother of Faith, Hope and Justice.” Somehow the censors had not seen through it and I later found that my deputy editor had sent it!

My father, Khushwant Singh, then the editor of the largest selling news magazine, the Illustrated Weekly of India, and close to Indira and Sanjay, was one of the better known journalists who supported the ‘emergency’, initially at least (Morarji Desai, in turn, had him removed from the editorship, when he became prime minister). Lal Kishen Advani, later the minister of information and broadcasting, would castigate the Indian press. “You were asked only to bend,” he said, “but you chose to crawl.”

Two prominent opposition politicians, George Fernandes and Subramaniam Swamy (both would become folk heroes and ministers later), went underground. Fernandes organised resistance and Swamy made a dramatic appearance in Parliament and escaped before the security guards could catch him. It is worth mentioning that, unlike today, at the time there was hardly any civil society or human rights organisations, no Internet, no independent cable or satellite TV, around which opposition to Indira Gandhi could focus. The electronic media was entirely under government control.

To Indira Gandhi’s credit, it must be said, after 19 months of ‘emergency’ rule, she announced elections, released political prisoners and lifted the restrictions on the press. Perhaps she calculated that she would win. She was wrong. Disenchanted with her authoritarian rule and all that came with it, including compulsory family planning, the Indian people overwhelmingly voted her and Sanjay – who would die in 1980 in a flying accident – out of power. ‘Empress’ Indira gracefully accepted defeat. It is another story that the government that replaced her turned out to be so incompetent and so prone to infighting that the Indian voters brought her back to power in 1979.

What did we in India learn from Indira Gandhi’s ‘Emergency’ and what lessons can other countries similarly placed take? One, no leader however charismatic and no matter what he or she may have done for the country, is ‘indispensable’. But what is truly indispensable for a successful democracy is an independent judiciary, not afraid of the executive, and a media, which has kept its distance from the powers-that-be and is bold enough to take them on when the occasion demands, even if it means suffering and imprisonment. As Winston Churchill once said, democracy may not be the best form of government, but it is better than the ones that have been tried.

The writer is a former editor of the Indian Reader’s Digest, the Indian Express and the Khaleej Times (Dubai). He is currently writing a biography of Indira Gandhi for Penguin Publishers.

rahulsingh84@hotmail.com