ONCE more the country finds itself in a situation where an army chief is pushing back publicly against unnecessary and theatrical political attacks by senior government ministers. Once some of these politicians had decided, for apparently ill-thought-out reasons, to resort to politicising in public the trial of Pervez Musharraf, the risk was that the army leadership would pounce on the ministers’ and sundry other politicians’ comments to question the validity of a trial the army as an institution is reportedly uncomfortable with. But it was an explicit decision by the army leadership to push back publicly. Hence, the army leadership must share the blame for either moving in the direction of a political crisis or indulging in needless theatre at a time when the country should be focused on other challenges. Inadvisable as it was for ministers and sundry politicians to pre-judge the trial of Mr Musharraf, it was for the special court or the senior judiciary to set the record straight and send a firm signal that a trial would be a sombre legal process and would not descend into political theatre. That the army chief himself has chosen to wade into the issue — and in typical military style, without explicitly mentioning Mr Musharraf, the trial or even the allegedly offensive comments — is truly extraordinary. The Pakistan in which Gen Raheel Sharif became army chief last year was supposed to be very different to the one his predecessor had become chief in. The transition to democracy is supposed to be well on track, with a national consensus that elected governments with uninterrupted terms are the only way ahead, as manifested in the historic voter turnout last May. Surely, there is nothing in Gen Sharif’s comments on Monday that buttresses the democratic project or the constitutional order of things. In fact, there should be no reason for an army chief to be seen to put institutional self-interest and self-preservation ahead of the national consensus that elected politicians must lead and that their decisions will be judged at election time.

If Gen Sharif’s comments and the ISPR’s decision to publicise them were inadvisable, that still leaves unexplained the intentions behind the comments. In a polity where perceptions seem to matter more than outcomes, it is possible that the comments were intended only to placate the wider army leadership and the rank and file that the institution’s image of itself and its standing with the public would be protected. Perhaps Monday’s unhappy episode will have no effect on whether Mr Musharraf’s trial will go ahead or if he’ll be allowed to leave Pakistan. But the warning shots have been fired and this could cause civil-military tensions.