2004: a bad year for democracy
By any standards, it was a bad year for democracy. A day before 2004 bowed out, President Pervez Musharraf let the nation know he would remain army chief till 2007. In a televized address to the nation, the president came up with no new arguments for his decision and repeated the old ones - that he would retain the two offices of president and army chief to ensure continuity in domestic and foreign policies.
We have had occasion before to say in these columns - and would say it again - that the best and only guarantee of continuity in state policies is democracy. It is democratic institutions and not individuals - howsoever well-meaning - that can translate the people's demands and aspirations into state policies and move the nation towards the ultimate goal of creating a welfare society based on the rule of law and sovereignty of the people.
The president's decision flies in the face of the pledge he had made a year ago after parliament passed the 17th Amendment bill on Dec 28, 2003. The reversal of his public stance is not surprising, since assemblies already in his pocket - those of Punjab and Sindh - had passed resolutions asking the president to continue to wear the two hats.
And on Nov 30 - while the president was abroad - acting president Mohammedmian Soomro signed the bill authorizing the general to be both head of state and army chief. The decision gives the lie to whatever hope one had of the New Year seeing the government and the opposition developing a modus vivendi.
Instead, within hours of the presidential speech, the MMA and the ARD joined hands to launch a movement against the existing military-dominated system. The general also heads the National Security Council, which is now the supreme body to determine the fate of governments and assemblies.
Taken together, the president's decision and the NSC make the military the real arbiter of the nation's political destiny. No wonder, leader of the opposition Maulana Fazlur Rahman should have boycotted the NSC's last meeting.
The boycott, however, does not serve to blur the fact that the maulana's grouping of parties, the MMA, was instrumental in the passage of the 17th Amendment. The MMA claimed that the amendment had turned the NSC into a statutory body instead of a constitutional one as originally intended.
But that did not in any way serve to dilute the NSC's powers or to make it a civilian-controlled council. On the contrary, the passage of the 17th Amendment allowed the Legal Framework Order to become part of the Constitution in its entirety without being voted upon by parliament.
Will the government try to work even the lame and controlled democracy we have? An indication of the ruling party's regard for parliamentary norms came in April when the Senate passed the NSC bill within three and a half minutes.
One more extraordinary bill concerned an amendment in the Political Parties' Act. Laws are made for the collective good, but this piece of legislation was enacted for the benefit of an individual.
On July 21, the Senate amended the act to allow a politician to hold both government and party offices. The law was made for the benefit of Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, president of the Muslim League (Q), who became prime minister after Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali resigned from that office on June 26.
After 57 days in office, Chaudhry Shujaat vacated the prime ministerial office in favour of Mr Shaukat Aziz, who won by-elections in Tharparkar and Attock to become the nation's 23rd prime minister.
The new prime minister, who won a vote of confidence from the National Assembly on Aug 28, has no experience of politics. An able economic manager who restored some health to the economy as finance minister, Mr Aziz has enormous tasks before him, not the least of which is terrorism.
Not yet prime minister then, he had a taste of it when the Islam bouli brigade, linked to Al Qaeda, attempted to assassinate him while he was campaigning during the by-election.
Throughout the year, the monster of terrorism stalked the country. The targets of terrorism included soldiers, politicians, the innocent, including those at prayer, and foreigners.
Among the military targets were the Karachi corps commander and his convoy, two politicians, PPP MPA Abdullah Murad and PPP information secretary Munawwar Suhrawardy, and a cleric, Maulana Ibrahim Salfi.
Other acts of terror included the bloody attack on the Ashura procession in Quetta - leaving 45 dead - besides bomb blasts in Multan Sialkot and Lahore. In May, Karachi lived through a nightmare when terrorists bombed two mosques and murdered Maulana Shamzai, leading to widespread public protests and acts of violence.
On the whole, 10 bomb blasts in Karachi left 55 killed and 184 injured. All this testified to the menacing rise of religious militancy on the one hand, and to the failure of the security agencies to smash terrorist networks on the other.
Regrettably, by the end of the year, the government had not been able to get out of its Wana trap. The large-scale deployment of security forces - estimated at 70,000 - stunned the nation.
The idea was to flush out foreign militants believed to be hiding in Wana, South Waziristan. The government claimed successes which turned out to be not even half as impressive as claimed.
In November, the NWFP government thoroughly bungled what, as it later transpired, was meant to be a public relations exercise. On the 26th, it announced that troops were being pulled out of the Wana area and that the operation had been called off.
The very next day, the government contradicted itself. All that the announcement and the denial did was to highlight the chaos and confusion in government circles with regard to Wana.
The opposition and the press claimed - perhaps not without justification - that the operation was being conducted at America's behest. The charge may have been politically motivated, but the truth is that it is in Pakistan's own interest to fight terrorism.
Our people need security from terror, and the economy needs foreign investment, which is not possible unless foreign investors feel safe. The murder of four Chinese - three in Gwadar and one in South Waziristan - last year served to underline the need for Pakistan to root out terrorism.
From the point of view of developing a national consensus, the outgoing year saw no progress. The provinces and the centre failed to agree on a national finance award, nor was any headway made with regard to the Kalabagh dam.
The prime minister's task now is to prove to the nation that he can carry the opposition along and develop a consensus on major national issues. The most unfortunate aspect of the political scene was the government's persecution of the two mainstream parties, the PPP and the PML-N.
The latter's leader Javed Hashmi was sentenced to 23 years in jail in April last, and the release on bail of Mr Asif Ali Zardari was not followed by any developments that could indicate a change of heart on the government's part.
The opposition, too, remained divided throughout 2004, until the fag-end of the year when the president's decision on uniform brought the ARD and the MMA together.
The year that has just begun will see local body elections on a non-party basis. As experience has shown, this is a futile exercise, since voters know which party is backing which candidate. Why not abandon this farce, and declare the municipal polls to be held on a party basis?