GEN Musharraf’s election from these assemblies, soon on the verge of expiring, is the great trick being contemplated against the people of Pakistan. To pull it off, the Daughter of the East (darling of the West) has allowed herself to be harnessed to the presidential chariot.
It’s a great scheme. The Generalissimo gets to save his skin while Mohtarma gets rid of the corruption (and money-laundering) cases she faces in God knows which courts of which countries.
But, pray, what makes the two think anyone will allow them to get away with this? In which fools’ paradise are they living? Don’t they realise the seasons have changed in Pakistan?
Granted Pakistan’s political parties, most of them, are well nigh useless. If the last eight years have shown anything it is their total bankruptcy. Ghazis of rhetoric – guftar key ghazi – they have proven themselves slaves to inaction. It is a futile endeavour to look for clarity of mind or honesty of purpose in the cesspools surrounding them.
But there is a brave new world emerging beyond the political parties. The vacuum created by them is being filled by other forces: lawyers, civil society activists, and, yes, the media, now a power to be reckoned with by would-be redeemers and saviours. Musharraf wanted to have his way with the Chief Justice (CJ), wanting to bend him to his will. How bitterly he has been frustrated, by the strength of the lawyers’ movement (behind which stood the people of Pakistan), and the historic decision of the bench headed by Lord Justice Ramday and his fellow judges, their names forever honoured in our history.
Who is Gen Musharraf now trying to fool by saying that he always had good relations with My Lord Justice Iftikhar? Are we supposed to be taken in by this declaration of innocence? As Dr Ajmal Niazi asks in his Nawai Waqt column (by the way, a must read these days) where were these good relations when the CJ was being pushed around and held by the head on March 13?
As he further observes, this sentiment (about good relations) was delivered in a tone one wouldn’t use for those with whom one had bad relations.
Good if the belated realisation has dawned that fences should be mended with the CJ and, more importantly, with the Supreme Court as a whole. We need to turn over a new leaf and move on instead of re-fighting old battles. But turning a new leaf should not be about the revival of social contacts. To mean anything it should mean putting arbitrary conduct aside and, for a change, respecting the Constitution.
If Army House, even this late in the day, forgoes scheming and learns to do things according to the Constitution, the people of Pakistan, collectively, will heave a sigh of relief and friction between Army House and the Supreme Court, if there is any, will disappear. But if the intention is still to play tricks with the Constitution, soothing words about good relations are likely to be viewed as another exercise in deception and hypocrisy.
However weak and fragile Pakistan may look on the surface – and military rule has done nothing to correct this perception – Pakistan deep down is strong and resilient enough to deal, in its own fashion, with almost anything, Al Qaeda and the Taliban included. What it can’t deal with any more is five more years of Musharrafian democracy. That will really do this country in.
Doesn’t it tell us something about this government that India, in the person of its National Security Adviser, M. K. Narayanan, so eagerly issues it a certificate of commendation? Narayanan says that after the judicial crisis the worst is over for the Musharraf regime and that India is ready to keep on doing business with it. As well it might, this being the most India-friendly government in Pakistan’s history.
The United States and India want this government to survive. The people of Pakistan perhaps have different priorities.
So the divorce from reality on the part of both Musharraf and Benazir couldn’t be greater, for they don’t seem to realise that if this summer’s events have proved anything it is that Pakistan, for all its failings, is no one’s private estate, not any more.
Times have changed. The post-March 9 movement was a watershed. As Aitzaz Ahsan rightly points out, and as Munir Malik lets no opportunity go by without making the same point, that the moment Musharraf announces that he is going to the present assemblies for another five-year presidential term, lawyers, backed by civil society, will come out on the roads once again, pushing the country into the throes of another agitation.
The responsibility for that will be on Musharraf’s shoulders. For all the good these assemblies have done, they have lost the right to exist. Not one soul in Pakistan, not even the members themselves, takes them seriously. What right do they have to foist Gen Musharraf on Pakistan for five more years? No greater mockery of the Constitution is conceivable. Yet this is what the Musharraf-Benazir deal is all about: self-interest triumphing over every other consideration.
The people of Pakistan may be guilty of many things – none greater than tolerating some of the biggest humbugs on the planet – but they don’t deserve what they have: military saviours who refuse to fade away even when their time is up; paladins of democracy eager to jump aboard sinking vessels; holy fathers dedicated to the cult of hypocrisy (amongst them, a Maulana Bluff-and-Diesel more slippery than an eel); and down south in Karachi a breed of fascism hailed by the powers-that-be as a model of respectability.
If it were up to these humbugs, we would be lost. But the legal community and the higher judiciary, civil society as a whole, newspapers and television channels – now come into their own – give the country hope.
Musharraf may be desperate about his future but that’s his problem not anyone else’s. The nation’s problem is the unrest likely to sweep the country if he insists on going to these assemblies for longevity and deliverance. The last straw and after it who knows what.
There is disquiet within the PPP itself. But the PPP has fostered a culture of sycophancy and absolute docility, to the point where questions may be asked of Musharraf in the Corps Commanders’ Conference but not of Benazir within her party. So no fears of any mass revolt in that quarter.
But there is also uneasiness within the ranks of Musharraf’s own supporters. Afraid of the future, they are feeling betrayed, some even thinking of jumping ship and moving to safer havens (the PPP or the PML-N).
And what will become of this deal if the Sharifs return or are said to be returning? The Supreme Court has already been moved in this regard. As this case proceeds, the consternation within the Q League can be imagined. Even as Musharraf courts new allies, his old ones are getting the jitters.
America’s war in Afghanistan is already burning us. We don’t want to be another Cambodia sucked into an alien conflict. A great responsibility devolves on the army, the second of our national institutions, (the first being the people of Pakistan). It must bid farewell to politics, so as to give undivided attention to its primary and real duty of national defence. ‘Unity of command’ chants the Gen-in-chief. What kind of unity of command is it when the army hasn’t had a full-time chief since Oct ’99?
Pakistan needs stability, not turmoil. Musharraf may still have a role to play but not if he insists on inventing his own rules rather than abiding by the Constitution.
He can either be another Yahya Khan presiding over another cataclysm or he can still be remembered kindly as the bridge to a peaceful transition. The choice is his but the clock is ticking fast. Some basic decisions will have to be taken fairly soon.