The ‘charter of democracy’

THE “charter of democracy” that Ms Benazir Bhutto and Mian Nawaz Sharif issued on May 15, 2006, is noteworthy both for what it does say and that which it omits. After listing the injuries that military rule has allegedly inflicted upon Pakistan’s body politic, it identifies the ameliorative measures its authors will take if either one of them comes to power again.

Military rule, it says, has marginalised civil society, downgraded the Constitution and representative institutions, led to a breakdown of law and order, weakened the federation and the bonds of national solidarity, let poverty and unemployment grow, and made life difficult for the masses. It has victimised political dissidents, vilified the people’s representatives, corrupted and broken up political parties.

Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif say they will work to make Pakistan economically sustainable, socially progressive, politically democratic and pluralistic, and ideologically tolerant. They will practice “undiluted” democracy, respect fundamental rights, allow a “vibrant” opposition to function, pursue bipartisanship in parliament, hold elections and follow democratic procedures within their own party organisations, institute maximum provincial autonomy, decentralise authority and power to the local level, eliminate the culture of violence, maintain rule of law, and consolidate an independent judiciary and a neutral civil service/ They will remove poverty, ignorance, disease, and want.

These goals are indisputably worthy, and one may be sure that even General Pervez Musharraf, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and their allies will be happy to endorse them from the public platform. The charter does not tell us how these goals are to be achieved. It implies that the restoration of “undiluted” democracy will, by itself, lead to their realisation.

The operative part of the charter, which is in the nature of an election manifesto, calls for the restoration of the Constitution of 1973 as it stood before General Musharraf’s coup. This will require repeal of the seventeenth amendment and the “mischief” introduced by his Legal Framework Order.

If and when the charter gets to be implemented, the prime minister will appoint provincial governors, chiefs of the military services, and chairman of the joint chiefs committee. Recommendations for the appointment of judges in the superior courts will be formulated through a commission consisting of the chief justice of Pakistan, the provincial chief justices, presidents and vice-presidents of the national and provincial bar associations, federal law minister, and the attorney general. (Provincial chief justices and bar association officials will participate when appointments to their respective high courts are to be made.)

The commission will submit a panel of three names for each vacancy to the prime minister, who will choose one of them and forward it to a joint parliamentary committee for confirmation. Members of this committee will be drawn equally from the treasury and opposition benches. It will hold public hearings, and come to a decision, presumably, by majority vote.

The charter will diminish the jurisdiction and authority of the Supreme Court and its chief justice. A committee, consisting of the chief justice and two of his senior colleagues, and not he alone, will assign cases to judges and place them on this or that bench. The Supreme Court will no longer settle constitutional issues. A federal constitutional court of equivalent status, with an equal number of judges from each of the four provinces, will take on that function.

The charter proposes to establish a “truth and reconciliation commission” (which may bring out the “truth” more than it will attempt reconciliation). It will investigate past cases of political victimisation, military coups, presidential removals of governments since 1996; perjury and perversion of justice on the part of NAB; and incidents such as Kargil. NAB will be replaced by an independent accountability commission, whose head will be appointed by the prime minister in consultation with the leader of the opposition, subject to confirmation by the joint parliamentary committee referred to above.

The leader of the opposition in each house of parliament will name the chairman of its public accounts committee. While the government will respect the opposition and its role, the latter must respect the mandate the voters have given the majority to govern.

The military will be subordinated to civil authority, and it will be excluded from governance. The National Security Council will be abolished. Intelligence agencies (ISI, MI, etc.) will be made responsible to the prime minister, and their political wings will be disbanded. Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif undertake to refrain from seeking the military’s help either for coming to power or for ousting their opponents. The defence budget will be placed before parliament for debate and approval. Grants of urban and rural state lands to military officers since October 12, 1999, will be reviewed to identify cases of favouritism, corruption, and profiteering.

In order to ensure that the next elections are free and fair, all parties and persons wishing to contest should be free to do so, and the exiled leaders should be allowed to return and participate in them.

If Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif have their way, the prime minister will submit to the joint parliamentary committee, mentioned above, three names each for the offices of the chief election commissioner, and secretary and members of the election commission. This he will do in consultation with the leader of the opposition, but if the two of them cannot agree on these names, they may send their separate lists to the committee, which will select the persons to be appointed.

What do we make of this charter? Clearly, the military cannot be held responsible for everything that has gone wrong in Pakistan. Take first the neglect of democracy. The term of the constituent assembly should normally have expired in the spring of 1951, but neither Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan nor any of his successors during our first parliamentary regime (1947-58) called for new elections.

Provincial governments in West Pakistan visited unspeakable atrocities upon their political opponents during this time. Rulers at both the central and provincial levels did the same during the second and third parliamentary regimes (1972-77 and 1988-99). Sectarian and ethnic violence erupted in 1952-53 (anti-Ahmadiya), 1972-73 (Sindhi-Mohajir riots), and 1974 (anti-Ahmadiya again).

Ziaul Haq’s personal disposition and policies gave rise to religious extremism, Kalashnikov culture, and terrorism, but the same cannot be said of Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, and Pervez Musharraf.

Military rule has admittedly done a lot of damage to the Pakistani polity and society, but it should be seen in the right perspective if we are to be accurate. The military may have further aggravated the “wounds” that were already festering on the body politic, and it may then have inflicted some new ones.

As mentioned above, the charter may be seen as an election manifesto. But which election is it contemplating? The one scheduled for 2007 will be held while General Musharraf is president, and the present chief election commissioner and his establishment will supervise it. The arrangements Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif propose will have no bearing on this election. They can pertain only to an election that she or he calls after coming to power — if that ever happens. Note also that, as Kunwar Idris has recently said (May 21), these arrangements will require constitutional amendments, which can materialise only if their sponsors have a two- thirds majority in the two houses of parliament. That is not likely to be the case in the near future.

It is not for me to say that Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif are not to be trusted because, when in power, they did the opposite of what they are now upholding. It is not beyond human capacity to learn from one’s past mistakes. Moreover, they do now promise to be more virtuous next time they hold office. One may want to let go of the past and look to the future.

But are Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif willing to do the same? They intend to have an accountability outfit of their own to investigate Kargil, coups and other removals of government, allotment of land to military officers, and misconduct on the part of NAB chiefs, among other things. They intend to have their own “witches” to hunt.

They should have been more forthcoming on the subject of democracy. Elections within their party organisations have, at best, been perfunctory. Will they now work from genuine, and not bogus, membership rosters and hold “transparent” elections at various levels? Ms Bhutto encouraged her cronies to “elect” her as her party’s chairperson for life, a preposterous move the like of which will not be found in any other democracy. If she wants her pleas for the restoration of democracy to be taken seriously, she should give up this nonsense forthwith and contest for the office.

The military regime, they say, ignores parliament. Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif must assure us that, if returned to power, they will sit in parliament regularly, answer questions, and participate in debate as prime ministers in other democracies do, that they will prevail upon their party members to do the same, and that they will rule the country by laws made by parliament and not by presidential ordinances issued days before parliament is scheduled to meet or after it has been prorogued.

The proposed procedure for the appointment of judges, chief election commissioner, and the head of a new accountability apparatus is much too intricate and cumbersome. Assuming that if one of them gets to be the prime minister, the other will be the leader of the opposition, Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif have done a lot of mutual back scratching and pampered the opposition. There is probably nothing wrong with the prime minister consulting the leader of the opposition in these matters, but the opposition should not be able to obstruct the process.

A joint parliamentary committee, including opposition members, to confirm the prime minister’s nominees (taken from the American practice) might work well. But a “commission” to generate prospective candidates is, in my view, entirely superfluous.

The charter says all the right things and, like other guides to political virtue, it is good to have, even if it is not implemented fully in the near future.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US.

Email: anwarsyed@cox.net

Making false promises

THE doings of the government and other public institutions are being increasingly marked more by propaganda than by commitment to the people’s welfare. As a result, the establishment is brimming with visionaries and publicists there is but hardly a planner or worker to be found in its ranks.

This trend is old but is gathering pace as President Musharraf (and also his government of sorts) seeks another term to make it a record 13 years. At the same time, the opposition is joining forces to cut short his tenure even before the 2007 elections.

There is something comical about the advertisements and supplements (all paid, of course, from public revenues) bedecked with picture galleries with the union council nazim at one end, the president of the country at the other. All of them feel “glad to learn” of each other’s feats while the common man hardly ever shares their joy. When something good is done for the people they see it and benefit from it in their daily lives.

The propaganda culture has given a boost to the craze for “mega projects”, implying ‘bigger’ than ever contemplated in the past. Leading this mega blaze is President Musharraf himself. He talks incessantly of building five dams each costing $5 billion or more but shows little concern for the loss of water from the deteriorating irrigation canals and the channels issuing forth from them. This is quite understandable as no razzle-dazzle is attached to these. With painstaking efforts and without large contracts, perhaps all of the country’s canals and watercourses could be lined at the price of one dam and could save more water than a new dam could produce.

The ministers are quick to emulate their president. Sheikh Rashid, only days after he took over the railway ministry, advertised plans to build circular railways, in seven cities while Karachi’s abandoned circular railway revived with fanfare a year ago on the directions of the president, carries but a few thousand passengers from Malir to the city centre. Nothing illustrates more poignantly the difference between publicity and performance than Karachi’s circular railway. It has tested the credibility of not just this government but of every government of the past to a breaking point.

While on the subject of Karachi’s public transport, let it also be said that the former nazim, Niamatullah Khan, visited dozens of countries and signed a matching number of MoUs for a variety of mass transit systems. Following in his footsteps the present nazim, too, has promised an overhead freeway, a mono rail and completion of the circular railway. It would be safe to predict that the current plans of Mustafa Kamal will not materialise in the foreseeable future as those of the former Naimatullah Khan’s did not.

More than inexperience or lack of knowledge it is the desire of the nazims, as also of the politicians at the higher tiers of government, to win laurels, which impels them to announce projects that they know will never be implemented. Any advice given to them to devote their time and resources instead to the less glamorous task of revamping the city’s bus service is brushed aside.

It may surprise Karachi commuters that 90 per cent of the buses they ride in are more than 30 years old. Every taxi and rickshaw is unsafe and emits excessive smoke. It may also be news for some that the Delhi administration in recent years has converted its entire fleet of 13,000 buses, 20,000 taxis and 60,000 rickshaws to CNG while the authorities in Pakistan continue to dither despite the fact that we are a gas country. No concern is shown for the safety of the passengers nor for atmospheric pollution.

They may be reserving their thoughts and plans for mono and magnetic rails, but these men should see what Delhi’s woman chief minister has done. The public transport in all the large cities of the country can be renovated and converted in stages to CNG at a cost that would not even, come to one-tenth the cost of the elevated freeway ($230 million) that Karachi’s nazim is contemplating between the airport and the Merewether Tower.

Politicians in Pakistan, even those who come from the military, have traditionally learnt to rely either on making false promises to the electorate, on money, or on regaling crowds at the hustings and later by rigging the ballot. Instead of putting an end to this charade, the present government is carrying it further.

Extravagant promises are being made both by the government and the opposition knowing quite well they would not be able to keep them nor be held accountable for breaching trust. On the other hand, whatever is possible to do to minimise the hardship of the people is not being done for it has no propaganda value.

The rubbish lifted from the streets, water running through the taps, overflowing gutters plugged, a safe and timely bus ride to work can win votes but mega projects cannot for they are either controversial, as are Gwadar port and Kalabagh dam, or remain elusive as is the case with desalination projects and power generation from Thar coal. Both schemes have been in the air for 20 years, revived on the eve of every election just to deceive the people and be shelved again.

The advantage of an authoritarian government is that once it has made up its mind to complete a task it can do so much faster, and perhaps much better, than a democratic government. In his six years in office with absolute authority, President Musharraf has squandered this advantage. Instead, he has used his guile and the state’s resources to establish a fake democratic order involving fickle politicians, armymen close to him and cronies from other walks of life.

Against this background it is not surprising that Pakistan figures among the top 10 countries when it comes to corruption and among the last 10 as the desired location for investment. Karachi is rated as one of the most unpleasant cities for foreigners to live in and work.

It is also time to reflect on the swelling ranks of our clerics and 20,000 or so madressahs. Do those who walk out of their portals every year foster only schism leading to hatred and bloodshed while the morals of the people keep sinking low as indicated by an Internet poll.

The charlatans of politics, religion and the “establishment” all combined in pursuit of their own ends have made Pakistan into a pariah state and a laughing stock. The voice and vote of the average man should count to pull the country out of this moral and political quagmire.

Al Gore’s comeback

F. SCOTT Fitzgerald’s principle that “there are no second acts in American lives” does not apply to Al Gore.

The man who had the most powerful job in the world wrested from his grasp by an ill-designed ballot paper and a capricious supreme court is making a comeback almost unheard of in a country where second place is nowhere.

Having recently appeared on the front covers of Vanity Fair, Time and Wired, and with his documentary on climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth”, opening nationwide in the US this week, Mr Gore is in the limelight and, it seems, in the running for the White House.

So far Mr Gore’s responses to questions of whether or not he will run have been inconclusive: “I have no plans” and “Politics is behind me” are two of his recent formulations.

But his new-found celebrity and relaxed manner have made many think a “Gore 2008” campaign might be the antidote to Hillary Clinton’s inevitable run for the presidency.

Mr Gore may be the only candidate who could deny Mrs Clinton the Democratic nomination - and it would make for a riveting primary campaign.

—The Guardian, London