THE nation desperately wanted to hear those words which Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani spoke after taking the vote of confidence.

For several years, the hearts and minds of the rulers and the ruled had not met the way they did on that promising day.

The new government is facing a great challenge in terms of meeting its reformist agenda. First, there is the system of grossly overlapping powers between the head of government and head of state due to encroachment of the latter on the former’s territory during the last six years. This dualism has the potential of hampering the process of reform in various areas of public policy.

Second, there is the challenge of keeping consensus within the ranks of the ruling coalition. This can turn out to be a formidable task given the presence of party bosses over and above the public office-holders at all levels.

Thirdly, the current economic crisis may be a great hindrance in the way of providing immediate relief to the public, and this may cost the ruling set-up in political terms. The first 100 days are crucial. People must believe that there was some improvement in their lot. No amount of propaganda can help if the situation on the ground does not change.

Will there be a time when we will have a provincial list of subjects, as was envisioned by the Constitution, to be incorporated within a stipulated time? Successive ruling dispensations, especially military governments, promised to protect and enhance provincial autonomy. They ended up further centralising the government. The nature and character of the current ruling coalition is such that the provinces will most likely have a fair amount of operational autonomy, given the representation of their ruling parties in the central government.

However, this autonomy needs to be enshrined in the Constitution itself so that the federation of Pakistan starts shedding centralism as its dominant character and moves to genuine pluralism. Additionally, provisions for autonomy must be transformed into an institutional arrangement that would oversee the share-out of financial resources and preparation of a set of policies. The longer it takes, the weaker will become the ties that bind the federation.

Apart from the formal speech of the prime minister, the nation heard with sheer amazement and a lot of awe that the president was part of the parliament. One is not sure whether it is possible for a person to be a member of parliament without belonging to either the National Assembly or the Senate. One can be elected to the former only through direct elections based on adult franchise, barring the elections for reserved seats for women or minorities that does not apply in this case.

The Senate is elected on the basis of PR-STV according to the party lists. One cannot be elected to the Senate unless one is nominated by a party. One is then enlisted as one out of 100 senators, none of whom is allowed to call himself the president of Pakistan. All this means that the office of the head of state should not be confused with the supreme lawmaking body.

Parliament can be unicameral or bicameral, but not tri-cameral. The president cannot become a one-person legislature. Lawmaking is a collective, and not an individual, function of public representatives. This argument is based on a constitutional approach to the business of the state.

In a political situation characterised by violation or suspension of the constitution, the principle of separation of powers becomes irrelevant. In other words, the dynamics of parliamentary democracy requires that the presidency is right-sized. In the present context, which is defined by an overlayer of presidentialism throughout the institutional framework of authority, it means that the presidency actually needs to be downsized comprehensively.

Apologists for the position of president being part of the parliament claim that he puts his signature on the bill passed by the two Houses which then becomes law. But then, presidential ordinances should make him part of the executive too. After all, the prime minister issues an ordinance in his name. Similarly, the fact that the president has the power to pardon somebody sentenced to death by the court should also make him part of the judiciary. All this would give the president a domineering position in the three wings of the state and make him a state unto himself in the tradition of medieval kings.

Prime Minister Yusuf Gilani has announced austerity measures for the Prime Minister’s House, while no announcement has been made for the presidential secretariat either by him or by the president himself. Over the years, the president’s office has accumulated enormous space, expanded its oversight functions beyond reasonable limits, increased its budget tremendously and operated an administrative structure parallel to the prime minister’s secretariat. It is time to curtail the huge expenditure of the presidential secretariat by downsizing it to 40 per cent of its budget, as in the case of the prime minister’s secretariat, if not to half of it.

The prime minister also proposed changes in the role and position of Pemra and NAB as part of his agenda. Pemra should be an independent body, free from the stranglehold of future governments. There is a need for this institution to provide greater representation to working journalists, electronic media operators as well as viewers as the ultimate consumers of the communications industry. Pemra would be far better as an independent body than as a subsidiary organisation affiliated with the information ministry. Let us borrow from countries with an established framework for the freedom of democracy.

Also, NAB should go. The nation has had enough of institutions which act as plaintiff and judge at the same time. The presence of two parallel judicial systems in Pakistan is certainly not in the interest of the nation. We must not continue to allow the use of the law and the machinery for adjudication and implementation of the law as an instrument of persecution, repression and revenge. Parallelism in the field of law has bred corruption and eroded respect for the justice system in Pakistan.

The last military government, like its predecessors, has created several legal and institutional dichotomies as well as legal and functional dualities, which need to be ironed out. No reformist agenda can succeed if the roles of state institutions and public offices are not neatly defined and understood by various stakeholders.

THIS is a question we have been asking for more than 60 years. There were times when we seemed to have the answer: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto taking over from Yahya Khan, Benazir called to power in 1988, even Musharraf’s coup because it put an end to Nawaz Sharif’s majoritarian autocracy.

But each time the surge of hope ended in disappointment. So, under the euphoria we feel today, there still runs an undercurrent of doubt and scepticism.

Even as the judges who stood up to the general-president’s fiat are acclaimed and rightly so, as pioneers of judicial independence, we also know that, right from the start, the Supreme Court, was always available to declare (as it did again on Nov 3) that it was alright for the military ruler to suspend, abrogate, amend the Constitution at will. And while speaking of the parliament’s supremacy, can one forget that the National Assembly had adopted almost overnight the (proposed) Fifteenth Amendment which, had it not been stopped in the Senate, would surely have nullified the Constitution as effectively as any PCO?

So what is there to prevent it happening all over again? The plain answer, sadly, is: nothing. The safeguards are all there in the Constitution, up to the ultimate penalty for high treason but they crumble before ‘ground realities’, i.e. the power of the gun and not the complicity, out of fear, ambition, greed of the establishment as a whole.

An Englishman asked to explain the system that had enabled democracy to survive and thrive in Britain, replied, “It’s not the system, it’s the people.” Are we then to understand that Pakistanis are genetically deficient, not fit for democracy, not capable of running their affairs? So said our British rulers about India, and have implied our military rulers. But military rule has never gone unchallenged and was every time brought to an end by the people’s urge for democracy.

The military ruler’s own sense of illegitimacy has led him to seek approval in some sort of judicial sanction and in proclaiming that he comes to achieve some higher purpose — ‘a democracy suited to our genius’, Islam, moderate enlightenment or whatever.

It is instructive to see how and why the various episodes of military rule came about. It was a civilian governor general who induced Ayub Khan to come in. Yahya Khan too did not stage a coup but was asked to take over by Ayub. Ziaul Haq had prepared his coup but in a sense Bhutto had himself opened the door to Zia by consulting him and his corps commanders throughout the 1977 crisis, keeping them informed of his negotiations with the opposition, having them take an oath of fealty. Indeed, he introduced the military Trojan horse into politics even earlier by setting up a political wing within the ISI. As for Musharraf, he had not quite planned his advent but had greatness thrust upon him.

The military as such does not have an ideology so one cannot tell what a military ruler will do when he takes over. It all depends on the opinions of the COAS and his set of corps commanders. Ayub was a secularist, albeit unavowed, Zia was Islamist (or Islamo-opportunist), Musharraf , another closet secularist, talked about enlightened Islam and grassroots democracy.

He promised clean and honest administration, reform of institutions, social and economic development. And at first he sounded as if he really meant to do what he promised.

To be fair, Musharraf did get some good things done — he brought the economy back from the brink , liberated the media, brought more women into the legislature and administration, set a more realistic direction for foreign policy. Above all, he held reasonably free general elections. But he left a lot undone e.g. madressah reform, shying away from taking on anything that threatened his own position. Power took primacy over promises, leading him into the same ‘dirty politics’ that he had come to clean up. In the last 12 months in attempting to shore up his position, he managed to demolish it altogether.

But now the country is again on the democratic path and everyone is saying and doing the right thing — including the army chief. Coalitions have taken over at the centre and the provinces. Cynics doubt that former rivals and potential contenders for power can sink their differences or hold back their ambitions for long. This may well be so but the relevant fact is that they have done so at this stage, bringing about a smooth transition. On the long view, however, one wonders whether such a broad-based coalition makes for an effective government and can carry out a coherent programme. Can a government that includes Maulana Fazlur Rahman take action to reform madressahs or change the blasphemy law?

Politicians sometimes have to play to different galleries but in the situation in which the country finds itself today, some clarity of aim and purpose is essential. To hear responsible persons describe action against the purveyors of suicide bombers as action ‘against our own people’ only confuses the issue. Then there is the question of governance, the way government does its job.

Not a week goes by without reports of projects delayed for years, costs exceeded by millions, newly completed ones breaking down, expensive machinery rusting away unused, urgently required equipment held up in customs by some bureaucratic small print. It is a story of administrative muddle, indifference and incompetence that does not change whatever the form of government. In holding back Pakistan, poor governance has played as important a role as corruption. It was good therefore to hear Asif Zardari mention the importance of governance over that of government.

One last word: the new information minister is a sophisticated, PR-savvy lady. One hopes that she can persuade her colleagues to give up the tired old refrain, ‘the previous government did everything wrong, we are going to put everything right’. This is not so and people don’t believe it but will accept the truth, however unpleasant, about the country’s situation and prospects.

DR Arbab Ghulam Rahim is proud of saying that he talks first and thinks later. But it seems that he does not bother to think about what he has said even after uttering nonsense. Otherwise, he would not have persisted in speaking ill about Benazir Bhutto even after her assassination.

This propensity to speak without weighing his words coupled with his strong-arm tactics against the Pakistan People’s Party had embittered PPP workers who are alienated from the politician from Thar. These feelings were vented in the first session of the new Sindh Assembly during which Arbab left the House without taking the oath to save himself from the wrath of the activists. In the second session of the assembly, he had to face more humiliation.

The episode provided the Muttahida Qaumi Movement with a reason to resort to an indefinite boycott of the assembly. Earlier, a rare reconciliation was witnessed between the PPP and the MQM as the latter announced unconditional support for the former in government formation at the national level. Unlike other pro-Musharraf parties like the PML-Q, the MQM voted for Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani, the PPP candidate for the slot of prime minister.

To take the process of reconciliation to Sindh, PPP co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari visited the MQM headquarters popularly known as Nine Zero. Despite opposition from all the PPP MPAs and the party cadre from Karachi to the idea of including the MQM in the provincial government, he persuaded his party to take the MQM on board. Thus the PPP-MQM negotiations on government formation in Sindh started but only to end in a deadlock soon because of, according to press reports, the MQM demand for no change of governor and some important ministries.

Then came the Arbab episode which led the MQM to boycott the Sindh Assembly session when Syed Qaim Ali Shah was to seek the vote of confidence as chief minister and his subsequent oath-taking. To make things worse, the thrashing of the former minister for law and parliamentary affairs, Sher Afgan Niazi, in Lahore provoked a reaction not only in his native Mianwali, but, surprisingly, in Karachi too, and a very violent one. It was May 12 on a smaller scale.

In this way, the nascent Sindh government has been trapped in a quagmire during its very initial days. How will it deal with this situation? Perhaps by employing a two-pronged strategy.

The chief minister, yet without a cabinet, says that the perpetrators of the April 9 violence, two of whom have been arrested with arms, would be dealt with strictly. Kingmaker Zardari has, according to TV reports, contacted MQM chief Altaf Hussain via telephone. Both have apparently agreed on a ‘reasonable’ formula for power-sharing in Sindh.

A question doing the rounds in Sindh’s political circles is why despite having a clear majority at the centre (with allies like the PML-N, the Awami National Party and the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-F) and Sindh, the PPP (or Mr Zardari) seems to be keen on taking the MQM along. The official party line is that it is a manifestation of Benazir Bhutto’s policy of national reconciliation.

But political analysts believe that Mr Zardari is striving to make new allies to free his party from the pressure that the PML-N is exerting on it. If this is true, then Mr Zardari is inching towards President Pervez Musharraf’s camp. This is also obvious from Mr Zardari’s stand on the restoration of the deposed judges of the superior courts, particularly Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.

In a meeting of the PPP central executive committee on the eve of the death anniversary of its founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Mr Zardari reportedly snubbed the leader of the lawyers’ movement, Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, by saying: “Don’t try to dictate to me on the issue of the restoration of the judges. They are the very judges who made me languish in prison for years.”

And Mr Zardari believes in action, not mere talk. PPP leader Babar Awan is reportedly approaching lawyers affiliated with the PPP to convince them to abandon the lawyers’ movement if Justice Chaudhry is not reinstated.

This ‘minus one’ formula must be to the liking of President Musharraf who had declared May 12 a show of public strength and who has, in the backdrop of Wednesday’s violence, warned lawyers to refrain from creating chaos.

So, lawyers, beware! No more burning your own colleagues to death. No more firing on Karachi streets in the garb of civilians. The (retired) general is not alone.