GENERAL Musharraf has, in blatantly Machiavellian pattern, crossed all constitutional and legal hurdles to continue to occupy the office of the president. Continuation in power has been his paramount objective.

Where laws have come in the way, they have been changed; where the courts appeared to place limitations, they have been emasculated; where the Constitution has proved to be a restraint, it has been suspended; and when judges, lawyers, media persons, civil society activists, and political leaders and workers have protested, they have been roughed up and tossed into prison.

The deadly bomb attack on Benazir Bhutto’s cavalcade in Karachi also served to put on notice all those contemplating the hazard of challenging the ruling junta. The common refrain to General Musharraf’s brazen behaviour is that he is an individual who is determined to hang on to power.

This appears to be an over-simplification. No individual can manage to wield power for even one day if he or she does not command the loyalty and support of the upper echelons of the state structure and its internal and external collaborators and supporters. Clearly, General Musharraf commands that support.

That General Musharraf’s support base does not have either extent or depth is by now all too obvious. The question then arises as to where from does his support emanate. Several inferences can be made. At the top of the list must come the military high command. Notably, the decision to launch the coup in 1999 was launched by the military leadership while General Musharraf was incommunicado on his way home from Sri Lanka.

The composition of that leadership has since changed, but the policy parameters guiding its decisions remain unchanged. General Musharraf is merely the face and the spokesman for this leadership.

The military has by now amassed enormous economic and political power and influence through industrial, financial and commercial companies operating under the cover of military foundations and trusts as well as vast agricultural holdings and several housing schemes.

This level of control and authority over the resources of the country has enabled it to create a military corporate empire and allowed it to liberally distribute patronage to its principal constituents — the military officer class.

It is this constituency that continues to extend support to General Musharraf and will continue to do so until his prolongation in power turns into a liability for its economic and political interests. That stage does not appear to have been reached as yet. And until then, the military high command and officer class is prepared to condone contempt for basic principles of law and political morality and to disregard repeated violations, howsoever serious, of constitutional and legal provisions and of civilised political norms.

That the military considers itself able to carry out such shenanigans is primarily on account of the support it receives from the powerful neo-conservative faction in the United States government. This faction spawned abjectly unscrupulous, even murderous, client regimes across several Third World countries headed by the likes of Somozas, Pinochets, Marcoses, Suhartos, Pahalvis, Ziaul Haqs and Musharrafs. Most of these countries have by now democratised and acquired a respectable place in the comity of nations.

The Pakistani military elite is one of the remaining few that continues to relish its client role and the exploitative control it allows them over the country and its resources. That such a role has reduced Pakistan to the status of a third rate Third World country appears to be of little consequence to it. The military’s continued support to General Musharraf can be viewed in this context.

Yet another relatively recent source of external support for the military regime is that of international financial interests. These interests have acquired a near monopoly of Pakistan’s financial markets, rendered possible on two counts.

One, privatisation of the banking sector to foreign investors and, two, explicitly pro-financial markets monetary policies pursued by the military’s coterie of economic managers led by a middle level career bank officer, Shaukat Aziz.

This coterie virtually took on the role of the ‘country representative’ for these financial lobbies. Consequently, the level of profits that these interests have earned in their operations in Pakistan can only be described in terms of historic records. The active support of these interests to General Musharraf can be viewed in this context.

Allied to the international financial interests is the domestic financial lobby: Pakistani banks and financial, commodity trading and stock market brokerage houses. With strategic assistance from the coterie of economic managers, these lobbies have managed to manipulate financial markets and rake in profits within weeks that most business houses around the world take years to accumulate.

That all attempts to investigate stock market manipulations have failed is indicative of the powerful links that financial market manipulators have with the inner sanctums of the corridors of power.

It is indeed instructive that the stock market index has never dipped throughout the ups and downs of the political crisis that has gripped the country since March 2007 and, in fact, soared after the carnage caused by the bombing of the PPP rally in Karachi. Yet, unfounded rumours of a coup against General Musharraf caused the market to crash! The support of financial interests as well to General Musharraf can be viewed in this context.

Yet another powerful lobby propping up General Musharraf is that of land market operators. Pakistan’s land market has always been subject to speculative manipulation, but the level of such exploitation reached new heights under the Musharraf regime. A low interest rate policy allowed cheaply obtained credit to flow into the real estate sector, causing land prices to rise five to seven fold and accruing windfall gains to real estate brokers.

A significant factor in recent years is the emergence of the Defence Housing Authorities as the largest real estate development entities in the country and their operations in collaboration with multinational construction interests.

That the army corps commanders hold concurrent positions as heads of these housing authorities has produced a powerful alliance between the military and the land market. The land lobby’s support to General Musharraf can also be viewed in this context.

Added to this bandwagon of powerful external and internal collaborators is an array of fortune seeking cronies of General Musharraf’s dozen odd ‘kitchen cabinet’ members. These include politicians – imported and home-grown, self-promoted and ISI-promoted — and established as well as newly-sprung businessmen, contractors and professionals who have exploited the calculatedly skewed policy environment to inflate their bank balances. There have been many innovative souls among them; with one, for example, setting up a fake university to acquire several acres of land in one of the emerging ‘education cities’ in the country — with the not-so-thinly-veiled purpose of commercialising the property at an opportune moment in the future and collecting windfall gains.

It is these robber barons, fortune hunters and charlatans from abroad, from within the military and from within the civilian domain who constitute the mainstay of General Musharraf’s military regime.

The battle for establishing a respectable and civilised democratic order in Pakistan, untainted by institutionalised white-collar sleaze, will need to go beyond the mere removal of the General’s uniform or the general himself.

IN his latest book Beyond The White House, former US President Jimmy Carter says, “Peace is more than just the absence of war. People everywhere seek an inner peace that comes from the right to voice their views, choose their leaders, feed their families, and raise healthy children.”

Carter’s analogy aptly fits today’s Pakistan where the country finally is headed to a transformed military president in civvies. General Pervez Musharraf has doffed his uniform and seems ready for his role as a civilian president.

He has added a new player to the nuclear armed nation’s power politics in the person of General Ashfaq Kayani, the new army chief. Musharraf is following a roadmap that he himself has charted for the restoration of what he calls ‘true’ democracy in Pakistan.

With the country’s legitimate Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and his brother judges still in illegal detention, the country’s popular television channels still off the air, and with a largely divided opposition, after having joined the snap polls bandwagon, still thinking of a boycott, Pakistan is hardly at peace. But the country is not at war either. It’s in the middle of a political and military chaos in cities and mountains in the north.

The latest developments might look favourable to Musharraf, but, in reality, these have brought more weakness than strength to his position. This is evident from the triumphant return of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from Saudi Arabia. Musharraf visited the Saudi King Abdullah as a last ditch effort to convince him to keep Sharif out of Pakistan at least till the Jan 8 elections, but his effort was to no avail.

The Saudi King, instead of obliging the Pakistani general, rewarded his arch rival Sharif by sending him back to Pakistan in style — gifting him a bullet-proof Mercedes and lending him and his family the royal Boeing 777 for his home-bound journey.

Is this an indication of Musharraf’s dwindling fortunes along with a polite snub from a foreign leader, whom Musharraf proudly calls his ‘elder brother’? Though an answer to this question cannot be a certain ‘no’, it can’t be a certain ‘yes’ either. What looks certain now, however, is that, besides the ‘US factor’ in Pakistani politics, the proverbial ‘Saudi factor’ seems to be effectively in place too.

Like the Americans, the Saudis have patiently watched the Pakistani politics for the past few weeks. They saw the discredited Benazir Bhutto rise in popularity following reports of US pressure on Musharraf to share power with her. Washington believed that the power share would enlarge the anti-fanatics coalition of secular forces in the country and have direct implications on the war on terror.

The talk of a ‘deal’ benefited Musharraf and Benazir almost alike. It earned Musharraf presidential elections that had a semblance of legitimacy, thanks to Bhutto.

It gave an opportunity to the corruption-tainted Bhutto to stage a homecoming laced with massive street power. However, politically, the politics of ‘deal’ damaged Bhutto more than Musharraf.

Once both the leaders achieved their immediate objectives, they started reclining to their traditional rivalry. Now the gulf between the two has reached a stage where any power-sharing deal would be no less than a miracle, for now at least.

The sole benefactor of the Benazir-Musharraf deal drama was Nawaz Sharif, sitting in the safe havens of Saudi palaces in the desert kingdom. The Saudi rulers, who oppose a woman’s rule in a Muslim country, saw an opportunity for Nawaz Sharif in the emerging political chemistry. Although a Saudi-brokered Musharraf-Nawaz reconciliation, with Washington’s blessings, seems improbable, this possibility cannot be discounted in Pakistani politics where there are no permanent foes.

Nawaz Sharif’s almost abrupt return may carry a price tag, but there is no denying the fact that he has added new weight to the emerging anti-Musharraf coalition.

If this coalition announces election boycott and takes to the streets, it will deprive the election of its only credentials — its legitimacy. Whether opposition parties boycott elections or stage a ‘parliamentary coup’ by decisively winning the elections, probably Musharraf’s days are numbered.

It does not matter much, whether Benazir Bhutto comes in power or Nawaz Sharif makes it to Pakistan’s highest office, Musharraf will see his political power weakening as either of the two leaders will bring along massive power of their large constituencies which could reduce Musharraf to a lame duck president keeping in view the fact that he lost his strongest constituency in the military after doffing his uniform.

He has already lost much of respect amongst his admirers in Pakistan’s civil society following his infamous crackdown on his natural allies under the umbrella of emergency.

Washington had better start betting on Pakistan’s popular democratic leadership, an independent judiciary, and free media, which hold a definite future in a country that America cannot afford to ignore.

Musharraf’s exit from Pakistan’s most powerful office has also left the military at a crossroads. The new military chief has the option of following in his predecessor’s missteps and press ahead with meddling in politics — a practice that has already severely dented the army’s image. The second sane option demands of the military to adopt its pure constitutional role of a professional fighting force that is geared to safeguard the country’s frontiers against terrorists and troublemakers, rather than a force out to conquer its own people.

The writer is a US-based journalist.
mjehangir@aol.com

AS the president took an oxymoronic oath on the “nowhere to be seen” 1973 Constitution, administered by an ever too keen Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) Chief Justice, a $60m Lear jet landed at Islamabad airport to become the fourteenth aircraft of the VVIP fleet that caters to the travelling comforts of the leadership of Pakistan.

Besides a convoluted order of priority, is there a direct relationship between the number of expensive VVIP aeroplanes and respect for the Constitution in a country?

How come a country conspicuous by the absence of a decent education, health or public transport system for its ordinary citizens, be so disproportionately sympathetic to the well being and luxuries of its leaders? Perhaps these aeroplanes support tasks of supreme national importance, such as the Frontier governor’s weekend partridge hunting visits to Nawabshah. After all we don’t expect him to be travelling by Khyber Mail or Chenab Express.

No wonder there is a long queue of people, ever so ready to rattle out oaths for such cushy jobs. The contents and the legality of such oaths is a matter that should interest only the finicky lawyers, the chattering journalists or the emailing civil society.

Pakistan has been badly PCOed and trapped in a tortuous cobweb of illegalities. The ‘emergency’ itself is illegal. It was promulgated by a person not authorised to do so. The Constitution cannot be suspended. Anyone doing so, must be given a fair trial under Article 6, instead of being upgraded to the post of the president. Can we have a president and a prime minister who take oath under a ‘non-existent’ constitution?

Having done so, they could at best be referred to as ‘non-existent’ president and prime minister. It is on record that within the first few hours of its promulgation, the seven member Supreme Court bench had declared the PCO as illegal and extra-constitutional. Thus the judges who took oath on the PCO and subsequently administered it to many other individuals can also be suitable candidates for a fair application of Article 6 of the Constitution.

Pakistan and its people find themselves torn and ravaged by the man-made disaster inflicted upon them on the afternoon of Nov 3. Do we continue to retain our citizenship, after the country itself has renounced its own Constitution? Do we even continue to remain a country which gives up on the core document that defines its nationhood -- almost like denying its own existence?

For how long will the people of Pakistan continue to be PCOed? Why must Pakistan and its people suffer such humiliating global indignity and such demeaning personal assaults? They must put an end to the PCOing of their lives, once and for all. They must refuse to vote for political parties that find it politically expedient to support such unconstitutional arrangements. For sixty years the judiciary and the political parties have extracted their pound of flesh from each PCO. They have regularised, validated, supported and even appreciated each arriving PCO. It is only now, and for the first time that a sizeable number of judges have taken a clear and firm stand of saying ‘No to PCO’. If the citizens of Pakistan do not rally behind their call, we must be ready to live with a fresh five yearly PCO for the rest of our lives.

Pakistan is suffering from an acute disease of compulsive constitutionlessness. The citizens of Pakistan must intervene to save this country. The politicians will not do so. They are only awaiting the next oath taking ceremony that would clear the way for their endless global junkets and Umrahs at the tax payers’ expense, aboard the 14 luxury aeroplanes parked in the VVIP section of Islamabad airport.

naeemsadiq@gmail.com

TRIGGERED by one man’s courage and a group of lawyers’ seizing of the moment, the judiciary in Pakistan seemed to be shrugging off its decades of deference to the wishes of the executive until its activism was perceived to be too hot to handle.

Hence it’s planned and enforced relapse into its historical servility. This brings into sharp focus the turfs and roles of various organs of the state and the institutions representing them; more so when the executive in Pakistan has always seemed to be impatient with the authority of others.

The legislature, executive and judiciary have rarely worked in voluntary tandem in this country, as the executive has always strived to deny space to the other two organs; marginalising them as irrelevant to the scheme of the establishment.

The limelight enjoyed by the executive is understandable; it occupies centrestage in governance, conducting day to day affairs of the state. But it should be sensitive to the fundamental roles of the legislature and the judiciary in the sustenance of development and freedom. The establishment, being the reality behind the mask of the executive, aggressively protects its hallowed status. This is now becoming increasingly unacceptable to the majority.

Historically, the legislature and the judiciary have been quietly acquiescent to the executive, allowing it to assume demonically autocratic postures. And this totally demolishes the cohesive togetherness which is the basis of people living together as a state.

If the executive is the pilot of governance, the legislature is the pivot of modern statehood and the judiciary should be the fall back for the citizenry, to provide succour and redress when the other two break the rules of the game.

The legislature is the weakest link in the hierarchy of our state institutions. Having been only in intermittent existence, it could never entrench into its designed role of the real sovereign on behalf of the people. Unsure of itself, fearful of the dragon of martial law, it has been content playing a poor third fiddle, making the right noises.

Satisfied if the legislators could get their share of the largesse, it has never lived up to its constitutional potential; allowing government by ordinances interspersed with school boyish hooliganism in the name of parliamentary debates.

But for the very early years of Pakistan’s existence, we have never had politics of policy in this country. Except for the heady days of the late sixties, it has never gone beyond the politics of the constituency- development; of water and electricity supply and the posting of a ‘patwari’.

Almost every Pakistani is a frustrated deputy commissioner, or SHO and that is the most authority our legislators have tried to exercise.

A vast majority of our politicians do not originate from grassroots populism, but are a product of their handlers from the establishment. To move up the ladder of political prominence, they learn the ropes as puppets; obliging their masters as required with handlers allowing them enough space to remain interested in their assigned positions.

Due to lack of education amongst the masses there is no pressure on the politicians to pursue the politics of public policy. Manifestos are seasonal at election times. They are soon buried under the heap of flower petals celebrating a victory or lie simmering under the debris of defeat.

Legislatures seem to have resigned themselves to institutional inactivity and personal aggrandisement of its members for some transient gains — financial or political, or both.

Judiciary has been an active organ of the state. It can boast of great luminaries of head and heart, but somehow is known to buckle down when the crunch comes. Some of the most honourable and outstanding men of this country have adorned the benches of higher judiciary, but timid interpretations of ‘necessity’, ‘vacuum’ and ‘chaos’ by a few of their brothers have veered the state on wayward paths. In recent weeks though, it has shown a belligerent defiance unseen before.

At the lower end judiciary has been the hand maiden of the executive, selectively supporting the empowered rather than the impoverished. Hence the long arm of the law is not for powerful hands.

The executive is powerful, as it should be, but not benign as it needs to be. With its vast resources it can manipulate the other organs and does so with an amoral glee. Also, by inclination we are autocrats — the politicians generally more so. Consultation is an affront to our intelligence. As a result the executive not only selfishly guards its own turf but happily overruns that of others. Hence the conflicts, real and imaginary, and jealousies amongst various institutions afflict governance.

The remarkable communications revolution has made media a great influence over our lives. It has emboldened the civil society as a major moderator and arbiter in national debates. The cloak and dagger games are unmasked everyday, hurting the privacy of power.

This also exposes the inadequacies of the executive — the ministers are on the mat, usually, and can’t have a decent, civilised argument. Media power can weaken the designs of the establishment and encourage legislative and judicial activism. The electronic media, though, is yet to gain maturity and the level of sense of responsibility needed for civilised understatement of emotions.

A proactive judiciary can be a ray of hope for the common man when the executive is underperforming. But judicial activism cannot, and should not be stretched too far. Judiciary must remain the check and balance over an errant executive — alert, unbending and judicious. Justice should be accessible to all without prejudice. But judiciary cannot replace the executive and should not even seem to be so doing. It should admonish the executive when necessary; it must prevail over the executive as the arbiter of conflicts. But it should be shy of playing the administrator.

The greatest challenge is for the legislature. It has to learn its act and do it. The parliament must represent the needs, hopes and fears of the people — in deed and practice. It should ensure that public policy is demand driven and not merely the supplier’s perception of needs. Public policy must be essentially through legislation and not routinely through executive injunctions.

The next generation legislator, coming out of the forthcoming elections should aspire to practice governance and not just be in the government. For that they will need to be larger than their handlers, if they really want to serve the people and not just themselves.

Time has also come for the executive — and the establishment controlling it — to show courage and tolerance. It should demonstrate courage to know what people really want, shed despotism and tolerate parallel institutions. It must learn that the days of an imperialistic governance culture are no more sustainable. The sooner we are done and over with it, the easier it would be for the executive to gain a place in the hearts of the people — loved and not feared.

Tensions and conflicts among the various institutions of the state are in the fore today, like never before. It is time for all organs of the state to recognise and respect each other’s domain.