President Zardari has done the right thing by extending the legal status of the National Command Authority before the cut-off date, Nov 28.

But we are puzzled by the president’s decision to hand over the chairmanship of the Authority to the prime minister.

Under the constitution, the president is the supreme commander of the armed forces (Article 243[1A]) and as such it makes sense that the chairmanship of the body which controls nuclear policy formulation, weapons development and strategic organisations and their employees should remain vested in the president.

Splitting the chairmanship of the NCA and the supreme command of the armed forces serves no strategic purpose that we understand.

It is not enough to argue that simply because military dictators made the decisions to invest in the presidency the supreme command of the armed forces (Gen Zia) and chairmanship of the NCA (Gen Musharraf), the decisions are automatically wrong from an institutional perspective.

Pakistan can and must be a parliamentary democracy with a powerful parliament and an apolitical presidency with mostly ceremonial powers. But command of the armed forces and the nuclear structure is not about political power, or at least it should not be.
 
The 1973 Constitution sets out in Article 41(1) that: ‘There shall be a President of Pakistan who shall be the Head of State and shall represent the unity of the Republic.’

Someone who is the head of state and representing the unity of the republic is precisely the person who should be at the apex of the armed services and nuclear command and control pyramids.

Given that the presidency has been used and abused by a series of military and civilian figures, we understand the impulse to strip it of any power.

But common sense and institutional soundness should not become casualties in the political debate surrounding the political powers of the presidency. We do not know what prompted the president to tinker with the NCA.

Perhaps because it has no real impact on the de facto nuclear power structure (the CJCSC, DG of the Strategic Plans Division and COAS are believed to be the decision-making linchpins in the NCA), the president considered it politically beneficial to ‘give away’ some of his powers.

But it is an impulse he should have resisted. What the country really needs is a reversion to the parliamentary and federal character of the original constitution, and that’s where the president’s energies should be directed.