ISLAMABAD, June 29: Gen Tanvir Naqvi, Chairman, National Reconstruction Bureau, on Saturday said the role of the armed forces in politics was being formalized through National Security Council, as it was an open secret that the armed forces played a part in politics and their de facto role was recognized by the politicians as well.
He said the whole idea behind introducing amendments to the constitution was to block future intervention in the smooth running of the federal democracy.
In a panel interview with Dawn, the NRB chief said: “The army has an unspecified, unwritten and informal role in the political affairs of the country.”
The politicians have recognized and accepted the role of the army in political affairs and turned to the army in matters of dispute even between the president and the prime minister, he said. The politicians had been inviting the army chiefs to intervene for defusing crisis situations, he added.
The NRB chief was told that there was a perception that an attempt was being made to give the military a permanent partnership role in the government through some of the proposed amendments.
He was then asked why shouldn’t the army be reformed which had formed political cells in its institutions, he said the role of the army in politics was not because of political cells, but such cells were formed because of the army’s political role.
The NSC idea was to bring all those wielders of power on a discussion table. “It is a reality, let us recognize it and bring it to a forum,” he said.
The NSC, he said, was a consultative body and not designed to supersede the parliament. “Its role will be consultative, not (one of) executive.”
When asked why the leader of the opposition, who also becomes a power broker at times, had not been included in the NSC, he said then it would have led to the demand for inclusion of the provincial leaders of the opposition as well which, he thought, would have expanded the membership to an unnecessary extent.
When it was pointed out that some of the proposed amendments were being thought of as Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif specific, the NRB chief said these amendments were not motivated except by one consideration that Pakistan should have a better qualified legislature.
He said the purpose of toughening the qualification criterion for the would-be MPs was to block the path of those who had embezzled money and failed the system in the past.
The NRB chief refused to answer a question about the election of the president after the installation of the next parliament on the grounds that it was not his mandate to answer such questions and would like to receive questions only about the proposed constitutional package. The specific question asked was: You have not touched the Article pertaining to the election of the president whose qualification under the 1973 constitution is that he should not be a serving government officer and at least two years should elapse after he has given up his government post for him to qualify for contesting any elective office. Does this mean that President Gen Pervez Musharraf, who is a serving COAS, would not offer himself for election to the post of the president after the parliament comes into being following the October elections?
Asked if anybody who is not a COAS would be able to wield such extraordinary powers which were being vested in the office of the president under Article 58(2(b), the NRB chief replied in the affirmative. He said in the presence of the NSC, there was hardly any chance of misuse of power, unless a totally unscrupulous person was elected as president.
The idea is not to undermine the prime minister but to support him/her in some way, as on some occasions the prime minister or the chief minister is driven to act in ways he might not like if he had any other option, he said.
The NRB chief said it was unimaginable that the parliament would ever elect an unscrupulous person as president of Pakistan. Asked why the same argument was not applicable to the prime minister who was also elected by the same set of public representatives, he replied: “Who says it is not applicable to the prime minister?”
How long did it take the NRB to conceive and finalize these far-reaching amendments? To this query, he said it had taken almost two years, but an extraordinary focus was directed (at this reforms package) during the last six months.
He said that national and international constitutional experts were consulted before finalizing the proposals, foremost among them being Professor Ronald Watts, an expert on federalism. He said the professor from a Canadian University was the most leading expert on federalism in the world.
He said the NRB studied systems such as those of Australia, Germany, and some emerging South American federations. Germany, he said, was a very strong parliamentary federation.
When quizzed whether it was fair to give only a month for the people to discuss and debate something which the NRB had taken two years to prepare, he said the reason for the delay was that he did not want to present half-baked things. “We did our level best to complete it in April, but were not able to do so.”
When asked if the government proposed to invite those political parties who had rejected the package for discussion and debate, with a view to developing a consensus, the NRB chief did not appear too much enthusiastic about the idea.
He, however, made it very clear that the amendments were not final “as we are open to suggestions and we may have lots of changes in the proposed package after obtaining the feedback from the public, as was done on the issue of local government.”
The NRB chief said the endeavour was to make such a system that was not derailed again and again.
When asked how the government proposed to sell the package to the people at large when the two main political parties were on the warpath with the regime and the religious elements, which were on the side of the government before Sept 11, were now on the other side of the fence, the NRB chief said the media would serve the purpose.
President Pervez Musharraf had already approached the people through public meetings and sought their views on the proposed reforms, he added.
When it was indicated that the proposed constitutional package gave the impression that the NRB put more faith in the four uniformed government servants in the NSC than in the collective wisdom of 457 elected representatives, all at least graduates, and all, unlike the uniformed government servants, answerable to their electorates, the NRB chief said that was not NRB’s thinking and “please don’t impute to us what we have not said.”
Gen Naqvi said he was not suggesting that the proposed package provided an ideal political system but the whole endeavour was to put in place a functional system. The most important aspect was that democracy stayed on.
He said the proposed constitutional package did not suggest sharing of the governmental authority between the president and the prime minister. The president would have no say in the ongoing daily affairs.
When asked if these amendments had been proposed by him and the president not in their present capacities but as ordinary citizens what did he think would have been the reaction of the nation, he said even now there was no hurdle in the way of anybody expressing his opinion about the package. The government was not stifling views and opinions.
Asked why only the legislature was targeted for reforms and other institutions like judiciary and the executive, were not touched, the NRB chief said it was the first part of the constitutional package and one, or maybe two, more would be coming.
Responding to a question about the change in the electoral college of Senate, the NRB chief said there was a perception that corrupt methods were employed for winning senate elections. Due to this perception, the Senate could not achieve the institutional esteem an upper house deserved.
Asked why the element of continuity which the Senate provided to the parliament was missing from the package, the NRB chief said the president had no powers to dissolve Senate.
By investing the president with powers to dismiss a prime minister, instead of the National Assembly, has he not taken Pakistan back to the 1956 situation when in two years four prime ministers were dismissed by the then president using the same powers? To this question, the NRB chief said it was in fact a safeguard against the dismissal of the national assembly. “It is, in fact, a cushion against the dismissal of the National Assembly.”
To another question whether the president was bound to consult the NSC before using his power under Article 58(2)(B), the NRB chief said it was not binding on the president. He said the NSC was not an executive body.