ON March 19 The Helpline Trust of Karachi (an affiliate of which is the Consumers Protection Council) held a question-answer seminar, supposedly our form of Hard Talk, on the subject of 'The Crisis of Leadership in Pakistan'.
The founder and maker of this Trust is Hameed Maker who, along with his few member citizens, keeps the platform throbbing, but in fact he is the captain, chief engineer, boatswain, chief cook and bottlewasher.
To start off the seminar, Maker made an introductory speech, telling us, inter alia, that "the meaning of leadership is much more than motivating and influencing people to perform. A leader's character must be based on proven character traits, principles, honest values, a code of conduct, and ethics. A leader must also be able to inspire confidence and trust. Unfortunately none of our recent leaders have possessed these leadership qualities. We have tried and seen various forms of democracies and military rules under deceptive leaders, ideologies and different disguises. All have left us more confused and economically and morally poorer."
On the mat was none other than Sardar Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari, a former member of the PPP and a former president of Pakistan, handpicked by Benazir Bhutto. He was sworn in on November 14, 1993, during her second round as prime minister (October 20, 1993, to November 5, 1996) and resigned on December 2, 1997, during Nawaz's second premiership (February 17, 1997 - October 12, 1999).
He is now president of his own political party, the Millat Party, which he formed after he climbed down from the top slot. We assume he was elected to lead his party by its loyal members and will remain as its leader until it folds or slides into oblivion.
Last Monday Leghari was full of himself, and like all our disgraced politicians made an attempt to convey that he, unlike the rest, was as pure and pristine as driven snow. The taped record of the well attended seminar makes an interesting transcript. When one question was put to him as to whether he considered himself part of the lack of leadership problem or part of the solution, he made no bones about unabashedly admitting that he "could be a solution."
Leghari is a seasoned speechifier and can hold forth with the greatest of ease for hours. He is stuck in the time warp of his presidentship, obsessed by his relationships with both Benazir and Nawaz, with Benazir holding the upper hand. Very few questions were asked as Leghari's answers to each was a long speech on his presidential experience which wandered far off and beyond the point. During one of his stories on the subject of how he dealt with the two recalcitrant premiers, he wandered on to the matter of the murder of Benazir's brother as being one of the reasons for his having to dismiss her and her government. One remark he threw at us was that we all knew who was responsible for the murder of Murtaza Bhutto on September 20, 1996.
Later, he was questioned on this statement of his and asked to name the murderer. He admitted that he did not 'know' for sure who it was but that he 'suspected' it was Asif, as Benazir had gone to great pains to provide cover for him during the aftermath of the murder when he was openly accused in the press of being its mastermind.
At least his assertion was more precise that of the chairman and the two members of the tribunal of inquiry appointed to investigate the circumstances leading up to the murder, Justices Nasir Aslam Zahid, Dr Ghous Mohammad and Aminullah Khan in their report released in May 1997 concluded that there was a plan to the murder and that the plan "must have been cleared by a much higher authority" than the two most senior policemen involved. They failed, naturally, to even hint at the identity of the "much higher authority".
Leghari waxed eloquent on how Benazir, Asif, and their party in power had robbed the country dry and rendered it bankrupt, and that one reason for his having to remove her under Article 58(2)(b) of the Constitution was that had he not done so at that particular point in time Pakistan would have defaulted.
As we all now know, this constitutional article, good or bad as it may have been, was a much needed safety valve which kept 'democracy' chugging along, albeit to our detriment, but avoided an army takeover. The equally corrupt and irresponsible Nawaz, who was at least capable of estimating his own level of corruption, during his second round felt that it could be used against him once again as it had been in 1993. Having found Leghari to be not too straight a man in his presidential-political dealings, three months after being sworn in once again he produced his 13th Constitutional Amendment, doing away with the offending Article, had it swiftly passed by an acquiescent assembly and Senate, and chased Leghari all the way to Choti to have him put his signature to it.
Leghari need not have signed, though bound to do so under the Constitution. He could have resigned at that stage, boosted himself in the eyes of the people and gone down in Pakistan's history as a rare breed of man. His excuse that had he resigned, the acting president, the Muslim League Senate Chairman, in any case, would have signed it with great eagerness, does not absolve him.
When talking about the incident of the storming of the Supreme Court which took place on that disastrous morning of November 28, 1997, Leghari rightly admitted that had the army sent four men in commando uniform to merely stand at the gates of the court, the storming would not have taken place. Now, as supreme commander of the armed forces, as he was under the Constitution, could he not have used his persuasive powers with the army chief, who was reluctant to move on his own, and saved the court from the vandalism and humiliation heaped upon it?
What we cannot forget as far as Leghari is concerned is his involvement with that known corrupt banker Yunus Habib who was ultimately convicted and jailed. Placed as he was, had he any business to get himself embroiled in shady affairs with shady characters merely for pecuniary gain?
We have suffered Benazir twice and Nawaz twice. Each in his/her second round, with Leghari as president of the republic, did far more wrong than in the first. The people surely do not again want or need Farooq Leghari in any future position of power. His friends and 'admirers' should advise him to live off his ancestral properties and whatever assets he has gathered unto himself along the way and renounce politics for his own and our good. He should be satisfied with the fact that he at least occupies a fairly notorious place in the history of Pakistan in the 1990s and is not merely a footnote.
From the past to the present, and I refer to Kunwar Idris's column in this newspaper last Sunday in which he listed the 'retreats' of General Pervez Musharraf during his eighteen months as Chief Executive of the land, as enumerated by suspended Senator Iqbal 'Groovy' Haider: refusing to sign the CTBT, surrendering on the announced procedural changes in the blasphemy laws, continuing the separate electoral system, restoring zakat grants to religious seminaries which impart military training, refusing to apply to the Supreme Court for a review on the interest verdict, failing to appeal against the Shariat Court ruling on family laws, negotiating with extremist groups when they issue their frequent 'threats', encouraging the formation of militant organizations, amending the PCO with respect to the status of Ahmadis, etc, etc.
Retreats are at times strategically necessary. As Churchill put it after Dunkirk: the British expeditionary force made a 'glorious retreat'. From his recent remarks and body language it would appear that General Musharraf has regrouped and is attempting to swing along the right path. He is considering signing the CTBT - this is a must. He talks of the difficulty which he is facing having to deal with 1.5 million extremists and their spreading tentacles, the uneducated bigots who can sink any country or empire. One and a half million is a substantial number, and ten of them in Lahore or Karachi, or five in Islamabad, Quetta or Peshawar, could easily disrupt any form of governance, particularly when law and order is not enforced.
What the general must remember is that people cannot forgive a military government, with the funds, force and power it has, for refusing to, or being incapable of, imposing on this unruly country some stable, strong form of law and order. Sufficient numbers of rangers are camped in our cities. Surely this force can do what the police are unable to do. The first observation of the founder of this country was that the first duty of any government is to ensure the safety of the lives and property and religious beliefs of its citizens. After 54 years, is it not time that the first 'duty' is finally carried out?