New Iraqi government

NOW that an Iraqi “national unity government” is finally in place, one hopes it will be able to make its presence felt, given the “tough man” image of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The delay in the formation of the cabinet and its approval by parliament shows the divisive nature of Iraqi politics. The cabinet no doubt represents the three major components of Iraq’s population — Shias, Sunnis and Kurds. But the wrangling over the portfolios and the tortuous negotiations to clinch a deal before the deadline underline the distrust among Iraqi politicians at a time when the country needs unity more than ever before. Congratulations are now pouring in from Iraq’s neighbours on the formation of the new government. Among those who have hailed the Maliki government are leaders from Iran, Jordan and Syria besides the Arab League secretary-general. But it is doubtful if Iraq’s first full-term government will be able to come up to the expectations of its neighbours and its own people.

The biggest issue facing the Maliki government is security. More than three years have passed since the Anglo-American forces occupied Iraq, but peace continues to elude the country. Blasts and suicide-bombings are a daily affair in which the majority of victims happen to be civilians. According to Lancet, a British medical journal, the civilian casualty toll so far is over 100,000. Yet there is no sign that the US-led forces are anywhere near stumping out the resistance. President George Bush expressed his satisfaction over the formation of the new government, calling it “a new day” in Iraq’s history but refused to say a word about a troop withdrawal, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, on a surprise visit to Iraq, hoped that responsibility for “much of Iraq’s territorial security should have been transferred to Iraqi control” by the end of the year. This gives an indication of the imponderables in the way. That the Iraqi security forces, which have not yet been fully formed, will be able to succeed where the US-led coalition forces have failed is to be over-optimistic. The issue essentially remains in the hands of the Iraqi people’s representatives, who must prove that they can work the democratic system.

Last year saw three electoral exercises — elections to the transitional assembly, the ratification of the constitution and the holding of the general election. Despite the threat of violence and a partial boycott by Sunni parties, the majority of the people cast their votes. The government now in place is an elected one, and it would be a pity if it were to fail. A failure of the democratic process will mean a continuation of the occupation with its concomitant of violence, which in the long run could put a severe strain on the Iraqi state structure, especially in the Kurdish north which has often shown a strong separatist tendency. An independent Kurdistan is bound to have a highly destabilising effect on Turkey and Iran, both of which have large Kurdish populations in regions bordering Iraq. A splitting up of Iraq — with a Shia entity in the south, a Sunni enclave in the centre and a Kurdish north — could touch off a process of fragmentation that could convulse the entire Middle East. Iraqi politicians who wrangled over portfolios and other petty matters should note that they owe it to the Arab and Islamic world to demonstrate a sense of responsibility and make a success of Iraq’s current experiment with democracy.

For free and impartial polls

THERE is talk among political circles of convening an all-parties conference to ensure that the forthcoming electoral process is free and fair. Nothing can be more desirable than this if all major political parties can be brought round the negotiating table to share their views, expectations and reservations about the next general election. A process of hammering out political differences over election rules and procedures, setting a code of conduct and holding the general election under an independent election commission and an impartial caretaker administration can thus be initiated. It may be hard to imagine such an APC materialising under the existing circumstances: the ruling party wants to re-elect President Pervez Musharraf, preferably in uniform, before the latter’s five-year term comes to an end in November 2007, and before new elected assemblies are sworn in. But it is for the ruling PML-Q to take the initiative and start building a consensus among all political stakeholders on the do’s and don’ts leading up to the general election. This is the only way for the process to have the credibility that the government desires.

If the ruling party is sincere in its claim of providing an even playing field to all concerned, the time to begin a dialogue with the opposition parties is now. The question as to whether the Constitution permits the existing assemblies to elect a president in their current tenure should also be brought up for debate and discussion. An APC convened to consider such an agenda will help lessen the bitterness between the government and the opposition, neither of which has shown much inclination to engage with the other for building consensus on matters that concern all stakeholders. The need for a pre-election APC cannot be understated in a country where the electoral process has not been a smooth one in the past, and is still in a stage of evolving. The forum, if convened, will be an opportunity to make a new start which will also help restore the people’s confidence in a political process that has left many feeling alienated in recent years.

A horrendous jirga

IT is rather mind-boggling to hear that a panchayat in Punjab could so flagrantly defy the law by ordering that a legally wed couple, who have the protection of the courts, be shot at sight. The girl, who belongs to an influential tribe, secretly married a man of her choice two-and-a-half years ago but recently approached the Multan bench of the Lahore High Court seeking its protection against her father and uncles. The court ruled that the police should protect the couple. Undeterred, the girl’s family tried to register a case against the boy but the police refused to do so in view of the LHC orders. That is when they turned to the panchayat which issued a shoot-at-sight order against the couple and also asked each family in the community to contribute Rs 5,000 so that they could “achieve their desired goal”. This kind of action is utterly stupefying. Such jirgas have no legal standing in the country and yet some of them do not hesitate to pronounce the ultimate penalty on some presumed violators of a primitive tribal custom. Indeed, the panchayat being in clear violation of the LHC ruling deserves to be held answerable for its illegal conduct.

One hopes that the relevant authorities will take immediate notice of how a judicial ruling is being openly defied. It is ironic that in 2003, only a few miles away from the village in question, a jirga had passed a verdict ordering that now well known Mukhtaran Mai be gang-raped to restore an influential family’s honour. It is clear that no lessons have been learnt from that shameful episode. Though the judiciary is taking note of such atrocities, one cannot expect it to step into each and every such happening. It is time the government took up the question of the jirga system of justice and put an end to it.

The seven-year itch

IT may have been possible to attach slightly more credibility to the so-called charter of democracy signed in London last week by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif had the two of them attempted a degree of criticism.

Even a token acknowledgment of their own imperfections could have been construed as a potentially healthy development: it would have hinted at the possibility of a hitherto unknown willingness among Pakistani political leaders to analyse the past with a modicum of objectivity. That, in turn, would have opened up the prospect of lessons being learned from past mistakes.

One possible consequence of such a tendency could be that the nation would no longer be called upon to revisit time and again the same old follies while also having to put up with new indignities. But, then, it would take an incredibly short memory to expect that sort of relief from the likes of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. Neither of them has exactly bloomed in exile (unless a reduction in the uncovered area of the latter’s pate could be interpreted as a blossoming of sorts), nor have they turned a new leaf.

This is not to say that the charter of democracy consists of nothing but gibberish: it makes some reasonably valid points and contains a few worthwhile proposals. But are they worth the paper they are written on? Our experience of the signatories militates against jumping to any such conclusion. Even in the unlikely event of demonstrably free and fair elections being organised next year, Pakistan would have precious little to gain from participation by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

This is not to suggest that they should not be allowed to participate, let alone that the present hybrid dispensation constitutes a superior alternative. It’s just that grandstanding by that duo — why, they even exchanged pens after signing the charter, in a futile attempt to imbue the moment with greater significance than it deserves — seems particularly grotesque in view of their appalling record in power. A spot of self-flagellation would have been more opportune than the habitual bluster and bravado — including plans for a coordinated arrival back home in time for the elections.

Pakistan can do without further meaningless drama. We’ve been there before: Benazir’s return from exile seemed considerably more meaningful back in 1986. An extraordinary and unpredictable set of circumstances catapulted her into power two years later. That’s when the disappointments began. She and Nawaz Sharif are not way off the mark in suggesting that the army’s refusal to butt out of politics was a leading cause of instability in the years after 1988. But that’s a poor excuse for strikingly poor governance and rampant corruption.

Of course, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif are by no means the only political players afraid of gazing into a mirror. The phobia is widespread, and General Pervez Musharraf is no less prone to it than anyone else. For instance, when he decried the charter last week as an attempt by the exiled leaders to hoodwink people into thinking that they are working for democracy, he appears to have been unaware that his own unkept vows about introducing truly representative rule place him in exactly the same category. And if the PPP and PML(N) leaders are trying just to save their own future and re-enter the corridors of power, how exactly does that distinguish them from Musharraf, apart from the fact that he is already in power and clinging on to it for dear life?

Reports suggest Pakistan has lately been under increasing pressure from the US and Britain to ensure that next year’s electoral exercise is a clean affair. In truth, superficial cleanliness would probably suffice for them to endorse the result. Despite the occasional semi-indication to the contrary, Washington is keen on President Musharraf remaining in charge in Islamabad, although for the sake of appearances it would prefer him to be armed with a less dubious popular mandate.

Would the US prefer Pakistan’s president to remove his military uniform and slip into something more comfortable? Perhaps, but — there’s always a but — not at the expense of losing control of the army.

That’s something of a no-brainer, though. As President Musharraf knows only too well, the power he has today derives more or less exclusively from his leadership of the army. A couple of years ago he went back on a promise to relinquish his military post, not because he had an epiphany, but because the pledge had been made in bad faith, as an expedient way out of a minor political crisis.

Apparently his present take on the issue is that although he cannot constitutionally remain in uniform beyond 2007, he would rather defer a decision on the matter until next year. This procrastination is evidently combined with a determination to secure election as president for another term before the present assemblies are dissolved.

Responding to the consternation among certain political parties over this matter, the general was quoted as saying last week: People debating the issue of the president’s election are unaware of the Constitution. That may be so, but it’s kind of difficult to keep up when every military regime that comes along feels free to tinker at leisure with that document. The last time I looked — which was admittedly a long time ago, in a volume edited, if I’m not mistaken, by the present attorney-general of Pakistan — it was unconstitutional for the army chief of staff to usurp political power, and there was certainly no clause permitting that post to be combined with the presidency.

Interestingly, the aforementioned charter of democracy talks about rolling back only President Musharraf’s amendments by going back to the Constitution as it stood in 1999, rather than in 1973 or 1977.

Back in 1999, there were sighs of relief in quite a few quarters when Pervez Musharraf succeeded in outmanoeuvring Nawaz Sharif from the highly unusual vantage point of an airliner cockpit. However, some of us who harboured no illusions whatsoever about the dire and debilitating nature of the Nawaz Sharif administration nonetheless looked upon the coup as a calamity. Pakistan’s pitiful democracy at that point certainly would have benefited from some sort of rejuvenation, but experience shows us that there is invariably an inherent mutual incompatibility between military rule and democratic salvation. More often than not, a malfunctioning democracy is preferable to dictatorship.

What we have right now is a weird amalgam of the two. It may not be the worst of all possible worlds, but it cannot credibly be posited as a long-term solution to the nation’s mounting problems. Even the hybrid order’s claim to be a guarantor of stability does not stand up to the most perfunctory scrutiny. We have, of course, heard that one before: in offering his nation’s services as a reliable client state to the US, General Ziaul Haq described Pakistan as “an island of stability” in a region beset with turmoil.

It wasn’t then and it isn’t now, in large part as a consequence of its open-ended role in the Afghan jihad. It’s also worth noting that stability isn’t necessarily a virtue: there are circumstances in which it can serve as a barrier to progress. But there is nothing particularly creative or productive about the destabilising factors of today, which range from the warfare in Waziristan and sporadic clashes in Balochistan to terrorism in Karachi-not to mention the uncertainties surrounding a parliamentary facade that requires a khaki glue to keep it from crumbling.

Can the creeping malaise — which involves a host of other contributory factors, including the spread of Islamist fantasies and a profoundly people-unfriendly penchant for privatisation — be arrested by the reinstitution of a less fraudulent form of democracy? Not necessarily. But then, no other solution springs readily to mind.

What President Musharraf has going for him, both domestically and on the international front, is the apparent absence of acceptable alternatives — a shortcoming that Bhutto and Sharif have unsuccessfully sought to address with their charter of democracy. A remarkable degree of gullibility is required for anyone to imagine that either of them has anything meaningful to offer as a potential prime minister. But if the choice is between one of them and the Chaudhrys of Gujrat .... well, that’s not much of a choice, is it?

Perhaps Pakistan’s profoundest tragedy in the post-Zia period has been that no political forces have entered the mainstream on which popular hopes for a brighter future could be pinned. President Musharraf’s rule, in a sense, is the price we have paid for this shortcoming. Of late the president has been exhorting legislators of the ruling Muslim League — a party with which he ostensibly has no formal ties — to concentrate on development projects in their constituencies in the run-up to next year’s elections. The Americans have a name for this sort of behaviour: they call it pork-barrelling.

The general is cognisant, this would suggest, of the seven-year itch — the popular mood for change that may yet drift towards the anyone-but-Musharraf domain. He has no intention of pandering to it, though, and one fears that if voters cannot be persuaded to re-endorse the ruling party, other means may be used to produce (here comes another Zia-ism) “positive results”.

For the time being, Pakistan’s best bet may lie in the realm of superstition: the 11 year itch whereby no dispensation has survived for more than a decade plus one year. That was the duration of the Ayub and Zia regimes, as well as the nation’s initial pseudo-parliamentary phase and the post-Zia semi-civilian interregnum. The problem with that scenario, apart from four more years of fickle politics and trickle-down economics, is the absence of any assurance that Musharraf’s mantle won’t be inherited by another general with a bonapartist affliction.

E-mail: mahirali1@gmail.com