THE people and the press have often spoken of ‘milestones’ and ‘turning points’ — which never were — in Pakistan’s 61-year march downhill. If one event can be so described, and that too at a moment of steep descent, it is Nawaz Sharif turning his back on power.

That is a milestone. If his party, the PML-N, stands by his commitment to be a constructive, not an obstructive, opposition it would be a turning point. Thus a sea change is in the offing — kudos to Nawaz Sharif. Asif Zardari could also ride the crest if the PPP were not to, as he says it will not, conspire to bring down Shahbaz Sharif’s government in Punjab, howsoever vulnerable.

The PPP, PML-N and some other competing parties joining forces to oust Musharraf, a common opponent, from power was wholly understandable and democratic. The same parties then joining hands to share the spoils of power, forgetting their manifestos and electoral mandate is contemptible and wholly undemocratic.

In victory, ‘carrying everybody along’ and ‘consensus’ have now become Asif Zardari’s plaintive rhetoric superseding principles, past rivalries and the public interest. It arouses the spectre of a large, unwieldy government which, in the absence of an effective opposition, would tend to become complacent as well as tyrannical. Where would aggrieved citizens go if all those who could help are in the government?

The central and essential feature of a democratic order is dissent and not consensus. A subtle device employed by all regimes — political and military alike — is to introduce a brand of democracy that suits, as they put it, “the genius of the people”. In fact it is only to legitimise their personal power and then prolong it. The people acquiesce in it until insecurity, economic hardship and the denial of fundamental rights drive them to revolt.

Such has been the course of our politics. Iskander Mirza’s ‘controlled’ democracy was cut short by Ayub Khan who gave the same idea the more plausible description of ‘basic’ democracy. Z.A. Bhutto tempered his democracy with socialism — ‘all power to the people’. A dictator more cunning and responsive to the sentiment of the time, Ziaul Haq subordinated his democracy to Islam. His pupil in politics, Nawaz Sharif, made a failed attempt to make Sharia the supreme law. For Musharraf, ‘real’ democracy lay at the grassroots (the village) and not at the top (parliament).

The ultimate outcome of these glib variants of democracy was the transfer of power from the institutions to an individual or a junta. Councils, cabinets and assemblies existed but to endorse their policies and laws. The people did not look up to the institutions as their minders — nominated or indirectly elected — were not answerable to them. Ziaul Haq was blunt but correct in describing the parliament (which the current crop of leaders insists is both supreme and sovereign) as a mere consultative council or Majlis-i-Shura. And so it is still described in the constitution.

In the current context just imagine how else a democracy could be described if Asif Zardari, Nawaz Sharif, Altaf Hussain, Asfandyar Wali and, inevitably, Maulana Fazlur Rahman were to be all in the government, except as totalitarian. Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, unless he is also lured into the consensus conglomerate, would be the lone but timid dissenter. Mushahid Hussain may be a bit more forthcoming, because he has, it is believed, no skeletons in his closet.

The dissenting voices of Imran Khan and Qazi Hussain Ahmad from outside would hardly worry the government for their parties do not have a large enough following to harness mass dissatisfaction into street protest which, in any case, would be long in coming.

A consensus polity carries the seeds of totalitarianism. Already, as we all observe, the party councils or executives, if at all they exist, constitute no check on their heads. Thus, when Asif Zardari persuasively told the BBC recently that whether or not he keeps the party office once he is elected president will be decided by the party, Owen Bennett-Jones, the interviewer, visibly squirmed. Of course he knew what all of us know, that he is the party. He alone decides who would be the prime minister and the holder of every other office — elective or bureaucratic — down the line.

Hardly anyone in the party ever defied Nawaz Sharif when he was the prime minister nor would anyone do so now when he is only a party chief but one with a halo around him. Defying Altaf Hussain is even less thinkable and much more hazardous. Asfandyar Wali and Fazlur Rahman dominate their parties under one or the other rubric. Both are third-generation family leaders.

That said, Nawaz Sharif’s refusal to share power at the centre and risk it in Punjab too has lifted the sights and hearts of people who have seen their leaders only crave for power. It is as if a tired wave has met with a tide of hope. From here should also begin his journey from hubris to humility.

This is also the right moment for Asif Zardari to make his tryst with destiny by giving up his ambition to be the president of Pakistan. The threats that he sees hanging over the country will be better averted if he were to sponsor someone from Balochistan, say Sardar Ataullah Mengal, or even Bramdagh Bugti if the rebel can be persuaded to come down from the hills. In any case, the president cannot be a symbol of unity nor will the parliamentary system return if Mr Zardari is the president even if Article 58-2(b) were to repealed.

Mr Sharif and his party must not succumb to Asif Zardari’s passionate pleas to come back into the coalition for the “sake of Pakistan and to strengthen democratic institutions”. Both ends will be better served if PML-N remains in the opposition. The lawyers’ agitation has been a godsend for the restoration of parliamentary democracy. This opportunity must not be squandered.

The explanations being offered that promises in politics are provisional and stretchable make the PPP spokesmen sound ridiculous. The word of a gentleman is a bond. Of all the people Babar Awan who practises Roman law and also passes for an Islamic scholar should be the last to defend his party’s blatant retractions.

kunwaridris@hotmail.com

PERVEZ Musharraf resigned as president on Aug 18. The two Houses of parliament and the four provincial assemblies, acting as an electoral college, will elect a new president on Sept 6.

One should like to think that the person they choose will have the qualifications that answer his job description spelled out in the constitution.

The president is head of the state and represents the unity of the republic. He is to be kept posted on the cabinet’s decisions and proposed legislation. He may suggest reconsideration of such decisions but must accept them if they remain the same even after they have been reconsidered. In performing his functions he is to act on the prime minister’s advice.

The president summons and prorogues the National Assembly and may call for a joint sitting of the two Houses of parliament; may dissolve the National Assembly in the event of a constitutional breakdown, order new elections, and appoint a caretaker government for the interim. He assents to bills passed by parliament before they can become law, may return a bill for reconsideration with his recommendations for revision, but must assent to it after it has been passed again with or without amendment. He may cause a referendum to be held on a question of national importance that will admit of a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.

He appoints persons to the posts of chief election commissioner and chairman of the Federal Public Service Commission in his discretion; provincial governors in his discretion but after consulting the prime minister; chairman of the joint chiefs committee and chiefs of the army, navy and air force in consultation with the prime minister. He appoints the chief justice of Pakistan and appoints the other judges of the Supreme Court after consultation with the chief justice. The Supreme Court has interpreted this requirement to mean that the president has no discretion with regard to these appointments.

The president has real operational authority in relation to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). Acts of parliament do not apply here except in so far as he may require. He is to make such regulations as he deems appropriate for the peace and good governance of these areas. The governor of the province where a tribal area is located acts as his agent and carries out his directions.

Commentators who assert that the president has enormous power are simply wrong. Apart from Fata, the constitutional stipulations noted above actually add up to a bill of constraints on his authority. His discretionary authority to appoint is limited to two posts (mentioned above) neither of which is a carrier of much power. He may disregard the prime minister’s advice in appointing provincial governors, but they too, are largely ceremonial heads of provinces as the president is of the federation.

The president appoints the service chiefs in (not after) consultation with the prime minister, meaning that the latter’s concurrence with the president’s choice is necessary. And he has no discretionary authority at all when it comes to the appointment of judges. His power to dissolve the National Assembly (Article 58-2b) can be exercised only if it can be shown that a constitutional breakdown has indeed occurred. The courts can annul his action if it is found to have been arbitrary.

It should then be clear that there isn’t a whole lot the president can do of his own accord. Unless the prime minister turns out to be excessively submissive and willing to take external direction, the president of Pakistan cannot be much more than a figurehead.

As stated above, the president represents the country’s unity, dignity and honour. It follows that a candidate for the president’s office must also be a man of honour, one who inspires trust and confidence. He must also have the qualifications required of a member of the National Assembly. Article 62 of the constitution lists these qualifications including the following. A person seeking election to the National Assembly must bear a good moral character and have an adequate knowledge of Islamic teachings. He should not be known as one who violates Islamic injunctions. He must also be sagacious, righteous, honest, ameen, and a keeper of his covenants.

Nomination papers for the presidential election have been filed for a large number of persons, including Mr Asif Ali Zardari, who is being billed as the candidate most likely to win. It is not clear why he wants a post which, as we have seen above, is for the most part ceremonial and devoid of operational authority.

I saw a report in this newspaper (Aug 21) saying that Nawab Zulfiqar Ali Magsi, governor of Balochistan, had sent in his resignation, but Mr Zardari had asked him to continue working. Another report had it that Nawab Raisani, the chief minister, had gone to Islamabad and requested Zardari not to accept Magsi’s resignation. Normally Mr Zardari, who holds no elective or appointive office, would have nothing to do with the acceptance of a governor’s resignation. But it so happens that he does: he has been directing the present government since his party took power five months ago. One may then expect that he will do more of the same, and unabashedly, when he comes to hold an office, and in this case that of the president of Pakistan.

Moving on to another aspect of the matter, it may be argued that Mr Zardari, who has recently advised us that covenants made with others need not be kept, does not meet the constitutionally mandated conditions of eligibility for election to the National Assembly (noted above), which a candidate for the presidency must also have. He may be intelligent, even clever. But one’s imagination would have to be stretched to preposterous limits for him/her to believe that Mr Zardari is a preserver of Islamic virtues, righteous, trustworthy, sagacious and capable of personifying this country’s honour.

Yet, the PPP has named him as its candidate for the presidency, and the ANP, MQM, JUI-F and some of the provincial assemblies have endorsed his candidacy. I cannot claim to understand this show of support for Mr Zardari’s ambition to occupy greater heights of power and glory. I have been studying this country’s politics for some 40 years. I thought I understood it all. But evidently there is an abominable streak in the culture of Pakistani politicians that I had failed to see.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts.

anwarsyed@cox.net

‘FRANKENSTEIN’, ‘doctrine’, ‘combine’. The three words don’t rhyme. They do here. There was a time when everybody thought that only the judges could hand it to struggling politicians out of favour and out of power.

Sullen-faced deposed prime ministers would turn up in a court of law resigned to the verdict they were about to receive.

If they were lucky they would earn for themselves the consolatory remarks: their dismissal would be found to be in violation of the law … but the doctrine of necessity would block their return to power and they had to lose the next election before they could stake a claim in government again.

It would be fallacious to say that things have changed only because this time it is the judges who are fighting for supremacy and survival. If anything, the premise on which they have been prevented from continuing is the same that has been used to justify the politicians’ separation from power — in the name of continuity.

The politicians are paying back. There is a deposed chief judge the prime minister hails as the ‘imam’ of all judges. But his government cannot restore the deposed claimant since there is another gentleman who has entered the chief justice’s office in the interim.

Continuity and technicalities, the prime minister and his depleted treasury benches seem to suggest, demand that the government persevere with the set-up as it exists.

There are other signs which confirm that this is a mere shuffling of the cards. The trends remain the same just days after the cries and prayers for the long life of the coalition were submerged in the new possibilities arising out of President Pervez Musharraf’s exit. One side thinks that it should consolidate its hold on power after toppling the president in what now appears was infighting in the American camp.

The other cannot help aggressively presenting itself as the always safe alternative now that the man that obstructed its links with the establishment is no more around. This is all right since this is politics. It’s not the end but the lack of innovation in the selection and application of the means that makes one desperate. A short while ago we were talking about reconciliation. We should have been talking manners before we reached a point where we were left wondering whether Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif would ever turn up at the Lahore airport to receive Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

Of the many definitions of democracy, one locally and contemporarily relevant explanation describes it as a process to select and identify the respective shares of groups in a country’s resources and its decision-making. This is what should have happened in Pakistan and we should have by now reached a stage where even the losers had a sufficient share in the spoils for them to behave in a civilised way.

This has not been the case and consequently even those who have ruled this country are hard pressed to prove their patriotism, and before that, their chastity. It is not an issue between two political forces, it’s a war between good and evil.

Amid the breaking up of agreements and the offering of gentlemanly apologies, the signatories to the Charter of Democracy have let loose their armies on each other. Any advances made by Salman Taseer are summarily met by the likes of Khwaja Saad Rafiq who is not content with or who finds his labelling of the Punjab governor as a karobari admi (a trader) too ironic.

So he chooses to add that before Mr Taseer kowtowed to Gen Musharraf’s line, and in the process found his way to the governor house in Lahore, he happened to be a comrade. The message is loud and clear: some people never learn.

The political idiom has failed to evolve and we are left with identifying the foreigners in a batch of militants who hold the Frontier hostage. It would be too dangerous for the state to address them as rebels. It would be politically incorrect to use force against your own people and it is never advisable to paint them as Islamists. ‘Foreigners’ does give us the room to manouevre — just as in another part of the country, foreign help that some people are supposed to be getting has prompted men in authority, from Gen Musharraf to Rehman Malik, to promote an old theory that has been forwarded by all governments without benefiting any.

Okay, it is not a supposition but a statement of fact: what is being done to remove the factors that compel Pakistanis to play into the foreigners’ hands? The biggest problem with the ‘foreign hand’ formula is that it absolves the local government operatives of all responsibility to try and overcome the problem. This is precisely why it is a good idea to snatch from them the excuse that they are subservient to the whims of the superpower. God, even the dreams are the same as they were before.