ASIF Ali Zardari accepts Pervez Musharraf as president and is willing to work with him. Mr Nawaz Sharif would rather not do either. There are, however, indications that Musharraf’s future may be left to the National Assembly. He on his part is ready to work with whoever forms the next government.

Gen Musharraf’s ruling style during the last eight years has created the impression that he is addicted to exercising supreme authority. It is feared that he will attempt to have it the same way with the next government. I should like to submit that such a turn of events is not inevitable.

In situations where two persons are placed together the opportunity for one of them to dominate the other will depend partly on the amount of interaction they must have. How much interaction will the president and the new prime minister have to have?

As I see it, the area in which they must ‘work together’ is very narrowly circumscribed. The Constitution, even after the mutilations it has suffered at the hands of Gen Ziaul Haq and Gen Pervez Musharraf, envisages a system that is essentially parliamentary. While all things are done in the president’s name, he does most of them on the prime minister’s advice. He is to oversee affairs in the federally administered tribal areas (Fata). Acting in his discretion, he can make appointments to certain specified posts. He may dissolve the National Assembly, and with it the government of the day, under certain stipulated conditions. He is kept informed of the decisions the prime minister and his cabinet reach, and he may ask them to reconsider their determinations. But he must accept them if they remain the same even after reconsideration. These would appear to be the bounds of the president’s jurisdiction.

It follows that there is not much on which the prime minister and the president have to work together. They can have an uneventful relationship if they do not step on each other’s toes; each staying within his appointed domain, and following the prescribed rules and procedures, and established protocol.

It may be instructive to see what went wrong with the interaction between Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and President Ghulam Ishaq Khan during her first term in office (1988-90). The PPP emerged from the 1988 election as the largest (but not majority) party in the National Assembly. After looking around for other options and consultation with the generals, and then with some reluctance, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan invited Benazir Bhutto to form the government. She managed to put together a coalition with a few groups that made up a slim, and precarious, majority in the house. She was sworn in as prime minister in the first week of December 1988.

She was 35 years old, had never worked for a living, and had had no exposure to the workings of a government. She started out as a novice. Ghulam Ishaq Khan, by contrast, was 73 at this time, had served the government in various posts for nearly 50 years, risen through the ranks and occupied the highest positions in the bureaucracy. He had served as a minister and for a time as chairman of the Senate. He was known for his thorough knowledge of relevant laws, rules and procedures, and traditions of public service.

He and Ms Bhutto did not get along well. Lacking experience and uninitiated, she did not know which way to go and soon got the reputation of being a ‘do-nothing’ prime minister. Yet, she was arrogant and unreceptive to advice, let alone guidance. She did nothing to deliver on her election campaign promises to bring liberalisation and modernisation, advance women’s participation in public affairs, repeal discriminatory laws against women and minorities. She proposed amendments to a few existing laws but introduced no new legislation.

Some of her close associates were widely perceived as corrupt. Her political standing faltered and one of her major allies, the MQM, left her government. She survived a no-confidence vote in the Assembly, albeit, only barely. She initiated an unnecessary conflict with Nawaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab at the time, attempted to replace some of the highest officials in his government with her own nominees.

In retaliation Mr Sharif’s administration, including high ranking civil servants, mounted a revolt against the central government. She alienated the president and the army chief, Gen Aslam Beg, when she insisted on appointing a retired general as head of the ISI without their concurrence. On Aug 6, 1990 the president dissolved the National Assembly as a way of getting rid of her and her government. It is not unreasonable to assume that had her performance met normal standards of probity and competence, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan would not have fired her.

What does this page from history tell us about the likely state of relations between the president and the prime minister in the months to come? Let us look at the current configuration of power. Pervez Musharraf is no longer a serving general and the army chief. He is not a politician with any noteworthy following. The present army chief does not need Musharraf as his representative or spokesman in the government. He will want to speak for himself. Thus, Musharraf has no base of power that might enable him to play a dominant role. That being the case, no prime minister will allow him a directing role in governance. He will be told to mind his own business, that which the Constitution assigns him. Musharraf has recently confirmed this interpretation, saying that it is now the prime minister, and not he, who will run the government.

The Sharifs and several other political leaders have admitted their previous ‘mistakes’ and vowed to be good from now on. There is talk of burying the past and moving forward, talk of ‘truth and reconciliation’. Musharraf too has admitted that his moves on Nov 3, 2007 were unconstitutional. He may be persuaded to apologise to the nation for his excesses. He as president is going to be as harmless as a tiger whose teeth have been pulled out. Why then spend time and energy on securing his removal? Why not let him be?

Article 58-2 (b) is not the sword hanging over the head of a prime minister that it is made out to be. It can be invoked to dismiss the National Assembly and thus the government, only if the president has reason to conclude that the government of the federation cannot be carried on in accordance with the Constitution. It is open to the courts to require evidence to prove that the alleged state of affairs did indeed exist. Convincing evidence of a constitutional breakdown will be virtually impossible to produce. The Supreme Court may then invalidate the president’s action as it did in the case of Ghulam Ishaq Khan’s dissolution of the Assembly in 1993. The court endorsed the president’s similar move in three cases without asking him to substantiate his allegation. But it may once again choose to reassert its independence.

The writer is a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics.

anwars@lahoreschool.edu.pk

THE polls on Feb 18 are declared to have been peaceful though a score of people died and many more were injured. The voter turnout was also a percentage point or two more than in 2002 though in quite a few constituencies it was less than 25 per cent – the lowest being 12.

The polls have also been held to be fair generally. The rigging wherever it occurred was by the candidates or by the party bosses and not under a central direction with the election commission conniving at it. The most common allegation of bogus balloting cannot be denied at places where, as in Karachi, the turnout in one constituency was 30 per cent and in another twice as much. In the desert constituency from which Sindh’s former chief minister contested and won, it exceeded 70 per cent.

President Musharraf did not after all rig the actual poll as was widely apprehended but, surely, he and his ally party rigged the electoral process by large-scale transfers of officials and recruiting thousands of new ones who were to conduct the poll and hector the voters. Then the president himself went round opening projects, like Karachi’s Lyari expressway, that were no where near completion.

On the role of nazims in pre-poll rigging one can do no better than quote from The Economist. “The PML-Q candidates,” says this authentic journal, “commandeered government vehicles to ferry campaign workers and voters. The agent of these abuses was often a district mayor, or nazim, an office established by Mr Musharraf. Having rigged two rounds of local government elections, Mr Musharraf’s supporters have bagged most of these posts. In Punjab’s 33 out of 35 districts, the mayors are PML-Q supporters. Many openly campaigned for the King’s candidate – who was often also a family member. With fat development budgets at their disposal, Punjab’s mayors illegally disbursed millions of dollars in electoral patronage.”

It seems the PML-Q owes its popular vote in excess of PML-N by eight percentage points (31 against 23) to the exertions of the nazims and officials but its fewer seats (41 against PML-N’s 67) to the bad image of party leaders and the candidates they fielded.

Musharraf’s devolution scheme thus had neither empowered the people at the grassroots nor underpinned his presidency. The nazims mostly come from the same families or clans as the parliamentarians and have emerged as tools of rigging for them. And so will they certainly behave in future elections as well unless the local government system is reformed to confine their role to civic affairs.

The looming danger now however is that the gains unexpectedly made at the polls defying gloomy forecasts may be squandered in post-poll manoeuvres by the winning parties and the soundly beaten Q-League. The sole purpose in holding democratic elections is to discuss and resolve all contentious issues in the parliament and not on the streets or in the barracks. Threats or legal wrangles even before the parliament has met tend to negate not this purpose alone but also the parliamentary tradition. The failure of the politicians in the past to abide by this basic rule and, instead, all of them vying to get into power invited military intervention or presidential dismissal. The cause of democracy is best served by debate in the parliament and not by conciliation or conspiracy out of it.

The politics of Pakistan has been and still remains an embodiment of a strange paradox. We wish to be a parliamentary democracy but the parliament has never been the centre of power nor, it appears, the one now elected will be. The leaders of the two main parties – the PPP and PML-N – who are making an alliance will continue to dictate the policies that their legislators must follow though they themselves wouldn’t be in the parliament for some months or longer if their eligibility to contest by-elections were to be called into question.

A parliament cannot be the centre of power if its members do not have the right to speak or to vote freely. Nawaz Sharif’s 14th Amendment (enacted in July 1997) has effectively deprived them of this right. A member who goes against the direction of the party boss must lose his seat and the jurisdiction of the courts too is barred.

Parliament in our system seldom makes the laws which is its main function and the bedrock of its supremacy over other organs of the state. It only ratifies ordinances, without adding or deleting a word, promulgated by the president on the advice of the prime minister who hardly ever attends the parliament.

The prime minister’s question hour which provides some of the most exciting moments in other parliaments, especially in the mother of them all – Westminster – is all but unknown to Pakistan’s parliament.

The decisions that the victorious party bosses are now making in caucuses are best left to be made in the parliament if they want the parliament and not the ‘establishment’ or America to sustain their government. Now the military commanders and the presidents (as long as 58-2(b) lasts) dissolve the National Assembly when they intend to do no more than to get rid of the prime minister. A strong and respected Assembly could resist the military or presidential intervention which a lone prime minister cannot. In the worst eventuality the parliamentarian could bargain to change the leader rather than let the system go by the board.

The grand alliances now being forged are bound to throw up large cabinets. The larger a cabinet, the more ineffective it is as was Shaukat Aziz’s of 70 or so ministers. Important and confidential matters of state cannot be taken to a cabinet which can be reached only through a public address system. Every prime minister thus is compelled to have a kitchen cabinet. Now is the time for the coalition bosses to resolve that the cabinet at the centre will have no more than 20 ministers and in the provinces half of that number.

The first and immediate test of the new government would lie in putting an end to terror. It should therefore make no pact or pass no law which gives comfort to the ideologists or sponsors of terror.

Religious extremism that has bloomed into terrorism has drawn strength from state policies starting with Liaquat Ali Khan’s Objectives Resolution and onward to the war Gen Yahya waged on his own people, Z.A. Bhutto making legislature an arbiter of religious belief, Ziaul Haq’s jihad in Afghanistan, Nawaz Sharif’s Shariat bill and Musharraf’s pacts with the religious parties.

In fighting the terrorists and isolating the extremists the parliamentary government shall have to lean heavily on the armed forces. In the flush of victory the new leaders, there fore, must take care that in confronting Musharraf they don’t lose the goodwill of the commanders. This is an advice to heed even for more familiar and recurring eventuality. Who ever said we have seen the last of the coups.

AFTER lying low for long — much against its nature — Lahore is abuzz with political activity. Much of the action owes itself to the presence of the city’s godfathers, the Sharifs. The officially-backed pretenders to the Punjab throne, who failed to cash in on the Sharif brothers’ prolonged absence from the scene, are making noises of their own. Sensible noises, as sensible as politicians thrown out of power are known to make.

Notwithstanding the alliances of today, the Feb 18 verdict restored the political alignment of yore in Punjab. And away from the presidency and the battle for the judiciary, the focus locally is on the totally different sets of mass level realities the Pakistan People’s Party and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz are faced with.

As public perceptions go, Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif’s graph is rising. He could emerge as the biggest beneficiary of a snap poll which some are expecting and others, like the PPP backers, fear two years down the road. The PML-N is in a win-win position. It appears to be the most likely to gain in Punjab from a political turmoil at the centre that culminates in a mid-term poll. This could be the biggest reason why they are so magnanimously pledging a PPP government in Islamabad support from the outside. If they are not sharing the power today, obviously they won’t get the blame should something go drastically wrong with the central government.

At the same time the PML-N has the numbers to form the government in Punjab and deny the PPP the official clout that it so badly needs to regain its long lost strength in the province.

The PML-N is making a compromise for its own ends, a compromise which makes a lot of sense to its supporters. It says it cannot join the PPP in the creation of a federal cabinet since it doesn’t want someone as unconstitutional and illegal as President Pervez Musharraf to administer the oath of office to its members. But it is willing to relax the rules in Lahore where the Punjab governor as a representative of the president would swear in a PML-N provincial government.

Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, both exhausted and relaxed after his one-man crusade against the sinful PPP and the blundering Sharifs, is ready to spot this conflict of interests in the PPP-PML-N camp. As a political observer he is absolutely right in warning the PPP of the dangers inherent in a PML-N government in Punjab. As a losing and marginalised politician his advice to Asif Zardari to have a shot at forming a government in Lahore is an attempt to find some place for himself in provincial politics. As a leader of the 60-strong group of PML-Q members of the Punjab Assembly, the possibility of a coalition with the PPP could act as somewhat of a deterrent against defections to the PML-N, aptly described by Nawaz Sharif as the parent party of the Muslim Leaguers.

It is as a victim of the media that Chaudhry Pervaiz puts his faith in the destructive powers of the lens. He cannot be faulted on this count. With a recent record like that, the former Punjab chief minister and his aides elsewhere are pinning their hopes on the media to go for the new set of rulers with a vengeance. It may turn out to be exactly that way but for the moment the media, which has taken a fancy to the idea of national consensus, is matching the reconciliatory overtures of the election winners.

Chaudhry Pervaiz could do with some help. As luck would have it, protecting the MPAs is not the only assignment he has right now. He has to protect the president who —as he says — he and his colleagues had elected. This may brighten the chances of the PML-Q surviving the current upheaval. Now since people outside the family are not to be trusted with any sensitive task in Pakistan, the slowing down of Chaudhry Shujaat Husain is a huge loss that cannot be fully compensated by younger brother Wajahat Husain’s recent and rather sudden rise to the status of a ‘king’s party’ spokesman in the federal capital.

It boils down to a few good men in the end. It may sound a bit strange to those not familiar with how politics is practiced in our corner of the world, but having two equally potent Sharifs to do the job is a real blessing. It means that even if Shahbaz Sharif is busy attending to another matter the other side of the motorway, Nawaz Sharif can deputise and do what is required in Islamabad. The duo is equal to having a few Pervaiz Elahis and, for want of a suitable name, a few PPP leaders in Punjab. The more famous PPP men like Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Yousuf Raza Gillani and Ahmed Mukhtar are busy helping Mr Zardari find a worthy prime minister.

This brotherhood has kept the Sharif political household running for all these years and the two Sharifs came into their own in the run-up to the Feb 18 polls. The ground they covered between them was enormous and the reasoning that went into their endeavours very sound. The word going around immediately before the election was that the PML-N was concentrating on winning Punjab even if at the cost of a few National Assembly seats. In the event, the party made it in force to the assembly both in Lahore and Islamabad.

This is precisely why they are being hailed in Lahore right at this moment as the wiliest and the most successful politicians of our times after Benazir Bhutto’s death in December last. They are all too willing to help Asif Zardari make his ‘national consensus’ government but the real challenge for Mr Zardari is to make federal ministers out of PML-N members of the National Assembly. If the hints dropped by Nawaz Sharif’s advisers in his hometown are something to go by, even someone ‘reputedly’ as open to give-and-take as Mr Zardari will struggle to achieve this target. Can Mr Sharif continue to disregard some of

the advice coming from the chaste, anti-PPP thinkers that swarm Lahore?