| 08 August 2003 | Friday | 09 Jamadi-us-Saani 1424 |
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Who's smiling now?
I got it wrong last week or, to put a better face on my obtuseness, at least partially wrong. Or let's say the nuances of the deal being put together between General Musharraf and the mullahs (especially Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, the kingpin of the Muttahida Majlis-I-Amal) escaped me.
It's not the maulanas who have been bamboozled or coerced into this deal. Not they who have been led down the garden path. Rather, it is the maulanas, especially those of Fazl-ur-Rehman's party, the JUI-F, who have exploited Musharraf's weakness and strung along the other opposition parties for a deal which advances no one's agenda more than their own. Hand it to them, they have played a sharp game of poker.
Shrewdly the maulanas made an issue of something which was neither in their power to grant nor withhold: Musharraf's uniform. And Musharraf, foolishly, staked everything on something that with each passing day is more a drag on him than a guarantee of security. Uniform saved neither Yahya nor Zia. What's Musharraf banking on?
In the proposed deal, the president's powers of dismissing the National Assembly are being modified, a decree dissolving the National Assembly first having to be cleared by the Supreme Court. This relatively cumbersome process will rob the threat of dismissal of much of its sting. Authoritarianism by definition is truer to its spirit when arbitrary and unchecked. Modified, or made subject to qualifications, its sting is lost.
While not wholly free of the threat of presidential dismissal, the National Assembly will be less at presidential mercy than it is now. If the maulanas say that their wheeling-dealing, far from being unprincipled, has secured this much, they won't be wrong.
If the maulanas have traded on Musharraf's weakness for his uniform, Musharraf and his emissaries have used the National Security Council as a bargaining chip. So far the NSC is like an animal whose presence is feared even if its form is unknown. About the only real thing it has done until now is to give Musharraf confidant, Tariq Aziz, a nameplate, he being Secretary of the NSC.
In the agreement being put together the NSC will be constituted by an act of Parliament rather than being foisted on the country through the Legal Framework Order (LFO). The Musharraf team is painting this as a great concession although in reality, barring Tariq Aziz's nameplate, it's neither here nor there.
The LFO granted a three-year extension in tenure to judges of the superior judiciary. The MMA wants this extension taken out of the constitution. Whatever happens on this score this is an issue between the judges and the president. It concerns ordinary Pakistanis not a whit who couldn't care less what happens to the judges one way or the other. Which is a measure of the respect the judiciary is held in Pakistan today.
What is the MMA giving Musharraf in return? Constitutional sanction and legitimization. On top of that, their votes for another five years as president when Musharraf eventually chooses to take off his uniform sometime in 2005. If we consult our calendars, this means Musharraf as president, a constitutional one at that, until at least 2010. Not a bad arrangement for someone who was being dismissed as army chief in 1999. Verily, soldiers don't fade away in Pakistan. They've developed the art of being around forever.
Have the maulanas given away too much, you might ask? The truth seems to be that while appearing to make a huge compromise, they have merely accepted the inevitable. Musharraf wasn't serving at the MMA's pleasure. He was his own master, consulting at best his own wishes and those of his corps commanders. The maulanas could not have removed him. They couldn't have chosen their own president. They have done the next best thing, placed the incumbent under an obligation. Musharraf's past three and a half years in power were his own. His future, in some degree, is tied to the goodwill of the MMA.
Musharraf's deal with the MQM in Sindh has obliged him to keep the MQM in good humour. Now he'll have to keep the maulanas happy too because his future depends at least partly on them. Consider how the Balochistan governor, an ex-fauji to boot, has been made to depart. The MMA wanted someone closer to its heart there and it has been granted its wish. If things go on like this, we can well expect the Frontier governor as well, a Musharraf buddy, to be looking for another job.
It's not just their governments in the Frontier and Balochistan that the maulanas are saving. By temporising with Musharraf they are trying to secure their future. Once this deal is done, the MMA will immediately graduate to second most important player after the army.
The Q League is a collection of hot air and expediency, unable to survive without the help of the ISI (or what we quaintly call "the agencies"). Musharraf guarantees the Q League's existence. The Q League guarantees nothing. The MMA, however, has a life and existence of its own. And when it joins hands with Musharraf it will be seeking to expand not reduce the power it already has. Don't worry about the Yanks. They know the difference between Al Qaeda and Fazl-ur-Rehman (even they know this much by now). And they have faith in their man who is more than willing to do their bidding. The pro-Americans and the 'moderate' anti-Americans all in the same camp: the Yanks will be laughing at this.
Other circumstances too have conspired for the success of this deal for right when the back-channel contacts seemed to be at their hottest came word of the Queen's necklace and the six months suspended sentences handed out to Benazir Bhutto and her incarcerated spouse, Asif Zardari, by a Swiss magistrate. A sentence by a Pakistani court could be passed off as victimisation but not this.
The PPP already looks shell-shocked. It will be absorbing the shock of this thunderbolt than waxing angry or crying betrayal when the deal between the government and the MMA comes through. The PML-N can only shout. As for Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, he can call another all parties' conference. A fat lot of good that will do anyone.
Fazl-ur-Rehman then seems to have played his cards astutely. He received a warm welcome from Mr Vajpayee in New Delhi. Did the Indian prime minister know something we didn't? It's more like it that one politician was able to recognize another.
To be fair to the MMA, even the PPP tried running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. But it had too many skeletons in its cupboard. And when the crunch came it couldn't offer what Musharraf wanted: a presidential term running into the distant future.
There will be much cheering in the presidential camp although all that it has managed to rescue is a ramshackle future for a president and army chief whose best is already behind him, someone who has spoken his best lines and who from now on can only repeat himself. Five, six or seven more years of Musharraf: even the mountains will blanch at the prospect.
Try selling Pakistan with these four faces at the helm: Musharraf, Jamali, Fazl-ur-Rehman, Qazi Hussain Ahmed. The most optimistic investor will sooner flee these shores than leave his briefcase behind.
From now on Musharraf will be more beholden to the maulanas than they to him. There was never a figure more pathetic or forlorn than Ghulam Ishaq Khan seeking a second presidential term from Nawaz Sharif. Musharraf may carry two loaded pistols by his side but when he is up for re-election it's not he who'll have the broadest smile on his face but Fazl-ur-Rehman and Qazi Hussain Ahmed.
Not that there's anything wrong with the clerics and divines of the MMA. If nothing else, they are better than the Q League. It's just that they are living in the wrong century. An army more into housing estates and jobs for the boys than anything to do with actual defence, supported politically by another army of divines wanting to recast Pakistan in their own image, scarcely a formula for marching boldly into the future. The people of Pakistan may be guilty of many things but this is greater penance than their worst sins deserve.
