“...The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right and obedience into duty...”

–Jean Jacques Rousseau: The Social Contract.

OUR scene today pathetically bears resemblance to Thomas Hobbes’ concept of primitive anarchy marked by a ‘war of one against all’ and to Rousseau’s idealisation of the ‘noble savage’.

Unfortunately, for more than half a century now, Pakistan has been mired in political and economic uncertainty and has had neither domestic stability nor constitutional integrity.

What a tragedy and an irony that a country which on its birth was considered a twentieth century miracle and which was fought and won entirely through a democratic and constitutional struggle should now itself be struggling haplessly for democracy and constitutional primacy and for a place among the peaceful nations of the world.

Quaid-i-Azam did not live long to personally steer Pakistan to be what he thought and aspired will be one of the greatest nations of the world. But during the last year of his life, he did warn the armed forces not to meddle in the country’s politics, and urged them to understand the true constitutional and legal implications of their oath of allegiance to the country’s Constitution. But ours is a sordid tale of broken oaths and unabashed military take-overs.

From the very beginning, power struggle deprived Pakistan of stable and functional political institutions, opening the door wide for military interventions. Our difficulties were aggravated by frequent political breakdowns and protracted military rule. We got possessed by a praetorian curse.

Ours has been a culture of political opportunism and ineptitude, which allowed military dominance to be entrenched as an accepted norm in our country. The sole beneficiary of this system was the wilful ruler who as Machiavelli had foreseen was either the child of fortune or was born into power or who acquired power through deceit and force.

In retaining his illegal power, every military ruler in Pakistan always found readily available wizard attorneys to serve as devil’s advocates and pliant judges to ‘sanctify’ their military coups and acts of constitutional usurpation. As a result of this long tradition, the cursed doctrine of necessity has become an integral part of our body politic, and democracy was never allowed to flourish in our country.

Today, Pakistan is going through one of the worst crises of its history. Since early March last year, General Musharraf has been running the gauntlet with his obsession for power at any cost. He chose his own means of staying in power which he has been applying ruthlessly no matter what the people of his own country or those of the world at large think of him.

For him, there were no legal or moral inhibitions as was evident in his politically-motivated presidential reference against the Chief Justice to secure his unmannerly removal followed by repeated blunders and bloopers including the May 12 carnage in Karachi and his open war against the media and civil society.

He then went ahead with his highly controversial re-election on Oct 6 while still in uniform as army chief, from the same assemblies that had elected him for his last term and were themselves completing their tenure.

As if this was not enough, General Musharraf clamped his Nov 3 extra-constitutional blitz in which he, as army chief, not only suspended the country’s constitution promulgating instead a provisional constitutional order (PCO) but also illegally removed those judges of the superior courts who refused to take fresh oath under his PCO, an acronym that now allegorically stands for ‘Personal’ Constitutional Order.

On Dec 15, Musharraf lifted the emergency but restored nothing except a badly mauled constitution with numerous amendments through unchallengeable presidential orders. Addressing the nation on this occasion, he categorically ruled out going back to the pre-Nov 3 situation, and said he will not reinstate the judges who were removed from office or repeal the curbs placed on the news media.

Far from reversing the actions taken by him in his capacity as army chief on and after Nov 3, Musharraf has only entrenched them further by giving them a life beyond the period of emergency though a flurry of constitutional amendments and decrees. His self-specific amendments in the constitution were meant only to consolidate his own position by providing legal cover to his recent actions under emergency, which now can not be challenged by any court.

Amazingly, all these decisions were made by General Musharraf under powers that he first used in his capacity as the army chief to impose an extra constitutional state of emergency, and then in anticipation of his vacating the office of army chief, he conveniently transferred to himself as civilian president.

This was a person to person exclusive transfer of power designed only to ensure that General Musharraf, even after becoming Mr Musharraf, continues to own the constitution and the law. It was he alone who was to decide as to when the emergency or undeclared martial law should go. Nowhere in the world is the state power concentrated so densely in one person by name.

He was right in claiming in his book, In the Line of Fire, that the “buck really stops with him”. He considers himself indispensable for the future of this country. It was with this conviction that he has decided to remain president for another term by all means, because in his view, the country will not survive without him.

There are now signs of hope at the end of the tunnel. The new army chief has already signalled his commitment to regaining the army’s place in the hearts and minds of the people, and restoring its prestige and honour by reverting it to its constitutional and professional role. He knows the people want a total civilianisation of the country’s governance and body politic.

General Ashfaq Kayani, himself a thorough professional, wants the military out of politics and civilian governance. No one doubts his intentions. He has already started implementing his decision. More than 300 military officers are being recalled from civilian departments in phases over a period of two to six months. This is a good first step towards restoring the army’s institutional integrity.

The big question, however, is who will undo the wrongs done to the country’s institutional integrity on Nov 3? Elections taking place in a state of illegitimacy might in fact complicate things. The only way is to reverse and nullify the uncivil powers that were exercised in the name of the army chief to turn the country upside down.

General Kayani alone is in a position to grasp the nettle by dissociating his office from the unconstitutional and illegal actions taken on Nov 3. He should turn strength into right. Every thing else will then fall in its place bringing an instant end to our political crisis.

MANY readers will probably remember a Wall Street bond trader and his constantly yelling into what Tom Wolf had disparagingly called a ‘doughnut’ in his 1987 best-seller, The Bonfire of the Vanities. In these 20 years both have come a long way. Yesterday’s ‘doughnut’ is today’s highly sophisticated ‘cell’ that can dart a whisper, or a video-clip, across the seven seas in a fraction of a second.

The golden boy has changed too. High on testosterone (less than five per cent of the traders are women!) he is alone at his desk, earplugs on, a determined fist gripping the mouse, eyes, like an eagle’s, scanning the horizon on the multiple screens that offer him a permanent view of all the world’s stock markets. On an average day, he makes, or loses, for his company 100,000 euros. On a turbulent day, his wins or losses could hit the 15-million euro mark. No questions asked! Since futures are on sale somewhere in the world all the time, he doesn’t sleep much, never goes on vacation and is washed out by age 30. Then, with all his well-earned bonuses, he is promptly transferred to less straining tasks and an upper niche in the financial hierarchy.

Jerome Kerviel was such a trader who worked for one of the biggest banks in France, la Société Générale, or SocGen. An unremarkable and unremarked young man, Kerviel got hooked on venturing far beyond the beaten trail early on. In one of the deals that he struck last December he made a gain of 1.4 billion euros for his bank. Given the staggering amount, he panicked; he was not authorised to make that bid. He hid the transaction under a sea of purely invented statistics, making it appear as if the bank had made a ‘mere’ 55 million euros.

Emboldened by successes in not only carrying on his phenomenal operations undetected but also in his ability to conceal them behind a statistical smokescreen, Kerviel galloped ahead with his virtual adventures until it was too late.

On January 24, this year SocGen woke up to the fact that it was five billion euros poorer and that Jerome Kerviel had the unrivalled, and not much envied, distinction of being the cause of the biggest scam in banking history.

Two days later, Kerviel turned himself in to the French financial police, admitting all but also wondering why his bosses were denying they were in the know all the time of what he was up to!Kerviel is convinced that his transactions would not have harmed the bank in such a dramatic fashion had his bosses given him time to wait out the current financial turbulence instead of impatiently unwinding his strategy in a volatile market. The young trader remains under police custody. Once the judicial investigation comes to its term, he will face charges of forgery, breach of trust and unauthorised access to computerised data. Proven guilty, he might face a seven-year prison sentence and up to 750,000 euros fine.

Kerviel’s redemption might come from the fact that despite the enormity of his misdeed, or probably because of it, he doesn’t fit into the pattern of a small-time crook. Like any other trader, he aspired for juicy bonuses and, most of all, respect from his colleagues and a speedy climb up the gilded corporate staircase. Apparently, even his prosecutors understand this point though one of his bosses went so far as to call him a ‘terrorist’.

The only time he has been allowed to speak publicly since his detention, Kerviel told news reporters on Feb 5: “I am taking my share of responsibility but I will not be a scapegoat for the bank.” A point of view almost shared by Christian Noyer, the governor of the Bank of France and the chairman of the French Banking Commission: “I find it completely incomprehensible that the vast position accumulated by Kerviel could not be detected sooner by the SocGen management.”

Everyone agreed though that laying the suspicion of conspiracy thickly on the young trader would have amounted to asserting that a whole gang was working secretly on a plot and that he was only a part of it. Convinced that this was not true, investigators went through the phenomenal bill of Kerviel’s cellphone that ran up to 1,000 euros some months. Why the cellphone when a trader has two fixed lines permanently connected to his ear-plugs? The sleuths discovered most of the cell calls were made to another youthful trader by the name of Moussa Bakir who worked for Newedge, a SocGen subsidiary.

The conversations that were recently released to the press only show a highly stressed Jerome Kerviel seeking advice from his buddy on what to do next. Moussa Bakir’s counsel invariably boiled down to the same few essential points: “Remember, you are not a criminal. Keep your eyes on the screens. Concentrate on the futures. Pounce when the time is right. Your bosses will be thanking you instead of sending you to prison.”

Speaking of the magical vortex of trading that can suck a young man into its infernal bowels, one of Kerviel’s prosecutors, Jean-Claude Marin, says: “This works a bit like a drug. There is an addiction. There is a dependency on this complicated system of betting on the markets and there is a sort of a spiral from which it is not so easy to exit.”

In a way, despite the five billion euros loss, stopping Kerviel in the tracks when they did was a relief to the SocGen bosses because, as they were to find out to their ultimate horror, during a maximum risk phase, the young trader had exposed the bank to a far greater possible loss of 50 billion euros!

At the same time, the French government has another headache to cope with. A number of banking predators, including French establishments like the BNP and Crédit Agricole, but also foreign banks such as HSBC and Barclays, are already rolling up their sleeves to make a fatal takeover bid for SocGen.

As boys will be boys, banks will be banks. John Steinbeck had said it all in his 1939 masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath: “A bank is a monster. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can’t stay one size.”

The writer is a journalist based in Paris.

THE February 2008 elections are being held in a state of what might be called apprehensive anticipation. In most democratic countries, elections are a normal and routine periodic affair.

Election campaigns do arouse passions and changes in government do cause policy shifts, but the institutions of the state continue to function in a more or less stable manner. Pakistan, in this respect, stands apart.

Here, elections take on the character of a referendum on the very future of the country and changes in government amount to tectonic shifts in power balance between different institutions of the state.

Most developing countries, upon independence from either a colonial power or an age-old monarchy, established an agreed constitutional and political governance framework. Thereafter, they went about the business of the state with respect to, say, economic and social development. Pakistan again stands apart. Here, the country has failed to agree upon a constitutional and political governance system; with the result that these issues still dominate the political debate, particularly during election campaigns. And elections are generally held as a result of a protracted struggle for democracy.

The 1970, 1985-1988 and 2008 elections can all be said to be primarily centred on the same basic issue: restoration of democracy, along with issues such as powers and functions of the president vis-à-vis parliament, role of the military, provincial autonomy, etc. Bread and butter issues – housing, health, education, public transport, social security, etc. – fail to acquire centrality beyond generalised mention in party manifestoes and election speeches. The debate does not centre around the relative merits of the content of alternative sector-specific party programmes.

Yet, behind the high profile political skirmishing lie bread and butter issues. Politicians, popular or establishment-produced, can only pursue their agendas if they have the ability to mobilise people – either around the ballot box or on the streets. And for the people, the motivation for mobilisation is their own bread and butter issues. It is instructive that during the 2002 elections, many villages and towns in the Hazara region had put up banners saying ‘Rozgar do, vote lo’ (give jobs, take vote), ‘Gas do, vote lo’ (give gas, take vote), and so on.

The demands highlighted on the banners are indicative of the role of elections in the political management of affairs of the state. Societies and countries comprise of various interest groups and elections are a means for these groups to acquire positions in decision-making platforms. In many cases, these interests are in conflict with each other and governance or political management is all about reconciling these conflicting interests.

Many of these conflicts relate to distribution of resources. In this respect, the budget that a parliament enacts is a political document that determines how much money will be taken from whose pocket and how much of that money will then be put in whose pocket. The decisions are a function of the relative balance of power between the various interest groups.

Whether agriculturists gain subsidies for inputs and/or higher support price for their produce or consumers obtain lower food prices or industrialists attain lower raw material costs and lower wages depends on the relative political power of agriculturists, industrialists, labour, consumers, etc, vis-à-vis each other. Whether the military manages to commandeer greater resources as against the advocates of human development depends on the relative civil-military political power balance. Whether resources are devoted to provide modern mass transit in cities or piped water supply in villages is decided on the relative strength of the two lobbies. Whether one province has its say relative to others depends on the potency of the federal arrangement. And so on.

Politics, through elected parliamentary platforms, is a unique process that allows conflicting interest groups to negotiate the conflicting demands of the various interest groups. Theoretically, the political arena is like the market place. Just as in the market, price and quality competition between producers and sellers ensures that consumers manage to obtain products at relatively the best possible terms, electoral competition between politicians — aspiring policymakers — ensures policies are designed such that the maximum benefits are passed on to the maximum number of citizens.

In a political environment, where the ruling dispensation does not emerge through an electoral process or with reference to the people, decisions regarding resource mobilisation and distribution – who to tax, what projects to spend the tax money on and who to benefit – is made in terms of interests defined by the ruling oligarchy. The interests of those excluded from the corridors of power in terms of class, ethnicity or region are generally overlooked by default.

Where the ruling dispensation is quasi-democratic, that is, governments are brought in being through controlled or rigged elections the establishment-produced legislators are more concerned in meeting the demands of their benefactors in the corridors of power than their electorate. In the event, elections fail to serve the purpose of articulating and catering to the needs of the people. And history records that deprivation induced by unfair and unequal distribution of resources and despair induced by disenfranchisement leads to adoption of the option of armed struggle.

The needs of the people can be classified in macro, meso and micro categories. At the micro level are services such as roads sans potholes, functioning sewerage systems, water supply, uninterrupted electricity and gas supplies, and security from car and phone snatchings. At the meso level are subjects such as availability of food, fuel, electricity, jobs, housing, health, education, and prices. And at the macro level are issues such as fiscal deficits, external balances, debt burden, foreign exchange reserves, etc.

The micro-level services are the domain of lower levels of government; however, their effective provision is a function of meso and macro level policy frameworks put in place by national and provincial legislators. One failure of the country’s national legislators in particular and provincial legislators to some extent, is that they have become embroiled in direct provision of these services – and claim to be re-elected on the basis of such performance. Resultantly, the larger functions of policymaking have suffered, exposing glaring gaps in macro and meso level subjects.

The February 2008 elections are thus significant for a variety of reasons. At the end of the day, the electorate will have their eyes on micro and meso level services that they need. However, larger issues of the balance of political power between military and civilian spheres, the distribution of power between the centre and the provinces, and the relationship between provinces will dominate, along with issues of distribution of resources between these divides: military vs civilian spheres, urban vs rural areas, agriculture vs industry, and owners of the means of production vs labour, and so on.

A freely elected parliament provides the negotiating forum for reconciling conflicting demands. Any tampering with the will of the people will fail to provide this forum to reconcile conflicting demands of diverse interest groups across class, ethnicity and provinces and, once again, lead to catastrophic consequences.

On first appearances Pakistan is bracing for political transition. Preparations for the parliamentary elections today are now complete and the military top brass is gradually disengaging from civilian spheres.

In the eyes of many observers these developments can be construed as signs of progress and a meaningful transition towards democracy. But that would be a wrong conclusion to make.

While Pakistan may be making a transition towards procedural democracy, it is actually moving away from substantive democracy. There are clearly traces of procedural democracy in present day Pakistan: electoral competition and transfer of power to a civilian regime. But General Musharraf’s emergency decree on Nov 3 has actually robbed the system of any checks and balances that could have made Pakistan’s democracy more substantive.

A free media and a growingly independent judiciary were the two principal casualties of Musharraf’s power grab—precisely the sort of institutions that could have ensured democratic accountability. Without effective checks and balances, this political transition will only be a façade, a return to political instability that was the hallmark of the 1990s.

While electoral transition may assuage Western concerns, it is unlikely to resolve the growing political turmoil in Pakistan. For one, Pakistan under Musharraf lacks the most basic pre-conditions for a smooth democratic transition. The media is gagged, prominent civil society leaders are still under arrest and the election commission and Supreme Court lack a reputation for impartiality.

With his moral credibility at an all time low, General Musharraf has now become a major hurdle in the path to restoring full democracy in Pakistan. Under his supervision, elections will inevitably be suspect and discredited. Not the least because Musharraf’s personal compulsions stand in the way of free and fair elections. He requires the future parliament to ratify his unconstitutional steps taken through the emergency decree. And he would prefer a divided and hung parliament to become a more powerful civilian President.

Let’s be clear about this. Pervez Musharraf is now part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. Pakistan has become more unstable, more polarised and more unequal under Musharraf. And while some in Washington still consider him to be an ‘indispensable ally’, he is increasingly considered as quite ‘dispensable’ on the Pakistani street. The public mood is telling. A placard held by a protesting lawyer had the following message for Musharraf: “cease emergency, restore constitution, reinstate judiciary and get lost.”

There is a yearning for genuine change in Pakistan—a desire to see a change of system, not just a change of face. This is a desire to have a system where the rich and powerful—politicians, generals, and intelligence agencies—are held accountable before the law. Elections without an independent judiciary are unlikely to be free and will only serve to restore the status-quo: a return to the 1990s when elections only ended up recycling the elite and when the country’s powerful intelligence agencies manipulated electoral results from behind the scenes.

For years judges have collaborated with the generals and legitimised their rule. For the first time, Pakistan’s judiciary has defiantly stood up to establish rule of law and to hold the powerful accountable. At the time of their dismissal, the Supreme Court judges were hearing a case of historic importance that challenged the legality of Musharraf’s re-election. This case could have changed the future political trajectory of Pakistan and acted as a powerful deterrent against future military interventions. But these judges became a victim of Musharraf’s emergency decree.

An independent Supreme Court was not just a challenge to Musharraf’s political ambitions. It was also viewed as a threat to the vested interests of economic and political elites. Through a series of historic decisions, the Supreme Court signalled its commitment for a progressive and socially just society. It revoked the privatisation of Pakistan Steel Mill for lack of financial transparency and questioned the allotment of precious land to the politically connected. In another unprecedented move, the Supreme Court set up a human rights cell that disposed cases of rape, honour killings, under-age marriages and other pressing human rights issues. It also significantly reduced the backlog of cases.

No wonder then, when Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was forcibly dismissed back in March it caused a spontaneous public outrage. It brought lawyers, journalists and human rights activists on the streets demanding judicial independence and rule of law. It was an orange revolution of sorts. For a country that is best known for ‘harbouring extremists’ this was an unusual but pleasant sight. These lawyers were coming out on the streets not to demand Shariah but to demand rule of law. Yet, Western support for this pro-democracy movement has been lacking. While Western governments have insisted that Musharraf lift the state of emergency, shed his military uniform and hold elections, it has curiously shied away from demanding a re-instatement of sacked judges. Many in Pakistan see this as an indirect endorsement of Musharraf’s emergency declaration. Musharraf was permitted to remove the main irritant to his continued rule: the Supreme Court.

By not insisting on the restoration of judiciary, the US seems to have favoured a change of face over a change of system. But this would be a grave mistake. If the country’s independent minded judiciary is not restored the doors for future military intervention will always remain open and the spectre of political instability will continue to haunt. The present crisis has created a unique window of opportunity to institute a system of checks and balances in Pakistan’s body politic and avert future military interventions. This opportunity must not be squandered. It is important to recognise the centrality of judicial independence for seeking a way out of Pakistan’s perennial political crisis. This is not merely a text book concern, but has a direct bearing on Pakistan’s stability and, by consequence, global security. Currently, the initiative for change is being led by Pakistan’s educated middle class: lawyers, students and journalists. If we do not heed to these voices of peaceful internal reform, we might be paving the way for a more violent and radical change in future. And in that case, the initiative for change may not necessarily rest with the liberal middle class.

The writer is a lecturer in development economics at Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford and is a Globe Fellow in the economies of Muslim societies at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.

adeel.malik@qeh.ox.ac.uk