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AROUND this time five years ago, there was a sense of optimism that democracy had finally taken root and, despite having sacrificed an elected prime minister on court orders, a civilian government was about to complete its full term.
Today, another civilian government is about to complete its full term, an elected prime minister has been sacrificed on court orders, and yet that optimism about democratic rule from five years ago seems to have evaporated.
In the term of the last government (2008-2013), judicial activism against the ‘corrupt’ PPP government was egged on by opposition parties and the media alike. Even then, it was widely viewed as an aberration that may not warrant a repetition in future.
In the PML-N government’s current term in office (due to end in a few months), initially opposition parties may have been ambivalent about judicial activism and so were the courts. But now as judicial activism is seen to become a norm backed by the opposition, the media is divided on its merits.
Today, we are wracked by uncertainty over what will happen after the polls.
The body politic is obviously confused and polarised. Depending on whose point of view you lend an ear to, the role of the judiciary is seen as representing the aspirations of the people and upholding the rule of law or undermining the popular mandate and the spirit of the Constitution.
This in itself ought not to cause despondency about the fate of democracy but it does, particularly when political parties avowedly committed to a democratic dispensation appear aligned with forces that, in our scheme of things, have not had much faith in, or love for, elected institutions.
When we were at pretty much the same place in 2013, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the general election that was a few months away would lead to a smooth transition of power to the winner of that exercise.
Today, we are wracked by uncertainty over what will happen after the polls if, for example, the party that has been at the receiving end of overwhelmingly unfavourable court judgements wins a majority or even if it emerges as the largest single party.
Whether the change of government in Balochistan in virtually its final months in office was the outcome of the arrogance and the incompetence of the PML-N chief minister as those who ousted him alleged or came at the behest of a premier intelligence agency as a senior politician from the province has charged is unlikely to be established.
What it indeed does indicate is that all is not well with the system and the efforts of the extra-parliamentary forces to knock democracy into a ‘compliant’ shape are not working. Therefore, the current state of play is not acceptable to them.
And what is the current state of play? Well, notwithstanding the public defiance of the ousted prime minister and his daughter, the PML-N government controlled by them has ceded authority in key areas to the security establishment, and the incumbent prime minister says relations with the latter are now harmonious.
How harmonious exactly? Here is an example. After the army chief’s umpteenth visit to Saudi Arabia (and to be fair after he also visited Tehran to brief the Iranian leadership), the military’s public affairs arm announced that more Pakistani troops would be sent to the kingdom.
Yes, the ISPR made the announcement and not the Foreign Office or the defence ministry. When parliament expressed anxiety and wanted to be assured the troops were not headed to join the Saudi-Yemen conflict as it had opposed doing that vehemently in the past, the defence minister refused to divulge any details; PML-N ministers also turned down the Senate chairman’s offer of an in-camera session.
Later, informed commentators suggested that the troops may be on their way not to take part in any battles on the Yemen front but to safeguard the House of Saud whose current sovereign has endorsed his ‘reformist’ crown prince son’s decision to cull reticent members of the royal establishment.
Nawaz Sharif’s travails may well be linked to shady business dealings/wealth accumulation during the period he was being nurtured as the political bulwark to Benazir Bhutto by the military in the 1980s and the early 1990s.
However, outside the courts and the opposition camps, there are not many takers of that argument. To the contrary, it is his stance favouring civil supremacy that his dilemmas are being attributed to.
The last government had the destabilising Memogate affair (yet to conclude after all this time) that brought the military in a near head-on collision with the PPP top brass but somehow the party managed to survive and lived to fight or (as some would argue) capitulate another day.
The so-called Dawn leaks episode saw the PML-N leadership and the military in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, with the prime minister and army chief seemingly locked in a fight neither was prepared to back down from. When the army chief was denied an extension and a new chief appointed one would have thought the curtain would come down on the chapter. But its fallout during the tenure of the new army chief appeared to have inflicted greater damage on relations between the two. That may be so and the more powerful among the two may have temporarily won the argument.
Even then, the issue at the core of the Dawn story seems not to have received the sort of attention it should have since it became a convenient whip to lash the PML-N with. Pakistan’s troubles at the Financial Action Task Force this week vindicate the government.
If the five per cent plus economic growth, despite all crises, falters as a result, it will be a tragic result of the power games played by institutions not content with their constitutional role. Has someone noticed the elephant in the room? Nobody, I guess. Every single decision-makers seems to love this uncertainty and the doom and gloom over the horizon it paints.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2018
