| April 27, 2007 | Friday | Rabi-us-Sani 09, 1428 |
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Reinforcing failure
CALL this a government? This is not even funny any more. It is more like an embarrassment, both for itself and for the nation. The only wonder is that those supposedly at the helm of affairs seem not to realise it, still convinced they can bluff their way out of the hole they have dug for themselves.
If only it was that simple. Seven and a half years (getting to be eight) is a long time, equal to two presidential terms in the United States. Such is the human longing for change that after some time people get tired even of angels and other gifts from heaven. Considering that the people of Pakistan have scarcely received gifts from heaven during this period their yearning for change should be easy to understand.
That they are tired is to put the matter lightly. They are simply fed up, which is what the popular response to the judicial crisis shows. Enough of self-appointed saviours: that’s what their growing discontent signifies.
As an ex-soldier, I find all of this hard to take. Forget the past when we branded the people of East Pakistan as traitors and tried to crush them. The present is alarming enough. There are no holy cows any more. Right here in Punjab, home of the army and hitherto immune from such stirrings, things are being said about institutions we all hold dear which were unthinkable just a short time ago. Is the Army High Command unaware of the language of the streets, the unprintable slogans being shouted? Or have sound-proof barriers been raised around General Headquarters?
Amongst a litany of charges two stand out: (1) the cushy lifestyle of the senior-most ranks, symbolised most of all by the lavish defence colonies which have sprung up in ‘Pindi, Lahore and Karachi; and (2) the meddling in politics.
The army is a national institution, our second line of defence — the first of course being the people of Pakistan. Gen Musharraf, important in his own way, is no national institution. Like most coup-makers, he is an accident of history, propelled to power by circumstances. If he comes in the line of popular fire, there is nothing strange about it. In politics, and he is in politics, such things happen all the time. But if because of him, or his personal agenda, the army becomes an object of popular anger, there’s no pity greater than that. The army deserves better than this.
In Iran the military and people are one, which is why Iran can defy the US. In Lebanon Hezbollah and the people were one, which is why Hezbollah could take on the might of the Israeli army.
We have an army bigger than Iran’s, more weapons than Hezbollah’s. We are the only nuclear power in the Islamic world. But we can defy no one, least of all our own nightmares, because ours gives every appearance of being a house divided, army and people traversing different trajectories, marching to different tunes?What strange windmills are we preparing to charge? The captains on deck still think that the most important issue facing the country is the president’s ‘reelection’ from the present soon-to-be-dead assemblies. What thunderclap will make them realise that this issue stands overtaken by events? As things heat up and the lawyers’ rev up their agitation, this proposition looks more and more doubtful.
But if, God forbid, the president and his team, discounting all the signals of popular discontent, manage to bulldoze the president’s ‘reelection’ by these assemblies, a huge blow will be struck against the spirit of the nation. For it will spread gloom and it will strengthen the feeling, already deeply ingrained, that the people of Pakistan will never be masters of their destiny.
As it is, the spirit of the Pakistani nation stands crippled at the altar of military rule. Which is why people ask whether it was for third-rate Bonapartism that this country was created? No country is without problems but in few countries do people constantly talk about survival and break-up. In Pakistan we do all the time which is a measure of our uncertainty and insecurity.
And our self-appointed guides and philosophers feel no compunction in saying, “Pakistan First”, when all that they mean by this meaningless phrase is, ‘we first’. If they were so bothered about Pakistan, half our problems would disappear.
What is the true significance of the judicial crisis? The outrage it has sparked gives rise to the hope that this may be an opportunity to finally settle the question whether we are to be a democracy or a permanent racetrack for riders on horseback.Maybe lawyers, journalists and other activists are overestimating the odds in favour of democracy. Maybe they are under-estimating the strength and tunnel vision of the forces of reaction which may be in no mood to give up their privileges. The last refuge of beleaguered saviours, let us remember, is always recourse to some form of arbitrariness. Ayub invited the army to take over. Zia delivered a body blow to his own political system. That option is always there for Musharraf to exercise (although if he does so he stands to lose the most).
Still, whatever the future holds, this much is certain that Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s defiance and the lawyers’ struggle which grew out of it have transformed the national landscape and infused a new spirit in the nation.
For Musharraf this has been a cruel spring in which he stands guilty of many miscalculations, the gravest being his inability to understand that by his actions he has diminished himself and turned this into a confrontation between himself and Chief Justice Chaudhry. He has reduced his own level. Justice Chaudhry, now very much the darling of the agitating classes, has elevated his.
Already the judicial crisis has spread wider than anyone could have foreseen. Justice Chaudhry has received a rousing reception in Hyderabad and Peshawar, with high court judges turning out to receive him. Now he goes to Lahore travelling along the GT Road. This is a confrontation which is doing Musharraf no good. In fact, carried out in these terms, this is a confrontation he is bound to lose.
Every army officer, however illiterate, knows at least one military maxim: never reinforce failure. Yet here Musharraf, like a bad staff officer, is doing precisely this. And who are his advisers in this crisis? The likes of Shujaat who has not one axe to grind but several hundred, Durrani and Wasi Zafar who, because of the facility with which they deny reality, have already become national jokes. These jokers now guard the generalissimo. This seems to be the season for grim jokes in Pakistan.
The generalissimo can still regain the initiative if he casts aside his fears and for once in his life acts as the commando he claims to be. If he can bring himself to withdraw the reference against Chief Justice Chaudhry, if he can summon up the courage to declare that he will take off his uniform (now more liability than asset) and if he says that general elections will be held first and his own election thereafter, like the eagle he soars above the storm and becomes master of the situation.
But does he have it in him to become like the eagle, daring, swift and sharp-sighted. At this late hour, when the shadows grow longer, can he transform himself? The signs are not auspicious. He is surrounded by too many small men with vested interests to protect and he is hemmed in by his own fears.
If Kargil proved his military incompetence, this judicial Kargil is providing daily proof of his political incompetence. A man with so many cards still to play but unable to play them and so doing what beleaguered commanders who have lost the capacity of clear thinking do: reinforcing failure.
