The Hindu : Trifling with Pakistan's future

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 10, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Trifling with Pakistan's future

THE PAKISTAN PRESIDENT, Pervez Musharraf, appears to be constantly getting his sums wrong as he now seeks to refashion his country's constitutional order ahead of the general election that must be held by October for a judicially-mandated restoration of democracy. His move to disable two high-profile even if discredited civilian leaders and his plans for a praetorian National Security Council reflect a sense of political desperation that is totally out of sync with his exudation of confidence as the arbiter of Pakistan's destiny. Not only that. Gen. Musharraf's authoritarian overdrive will not suit Pakistan's long-term interests. In a purely personal reckoning too, Gen. Musharraf's popularity graph is already languishing at the lower end of the spectrum in quite an inverse proportion to the massive scale of the votes that he garnered in a recent referendum. The flawed `mandate', which he obtained in the presidential referendum on April 30, has not only eroded his efforts at `democratising' his military rule but also accentuated his sense of anxiety to safeguard his political flanks for years to come in the misty future. As a result, he seems to have decided at this point to gamble on transparently draconian proposals which, by his book of politics, are `democratic' innovations though. While the circumstances of his coup in October 1999 and the general tenor of his administration have always remained an affront to the spirit of democracy, in spite of his welcome measures to curb political extremism and religious radicalism, Gen. Musharraf's first major failure to win friends and influence people at home was the recent referendum. Conceived in haste and carried out in a blatantly partisan fashion, the political plebiscite on his rule proved a disaster for Pakistan and for him. What he should do, therefore, is to undertake a reality check regarding Pakistan's priorities and review his new proposals in that light.

The Musharraf administration's latest decree on a two-term limit for Pakistan's Prime Ministers and provincial Chief Ministers is more tenuous than a thinly veiled ban on any efforts by either Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif or indeed both to run for the prime ministerial stakes. In a sense, this `constitutional' fiat might have been devised as a final indictment on these two leaders who had themselves messed up their own separate mandates of the people during their independent tenures in office. Yet, Gen. Musharraf has no less revealed his own political nervousness at having to deal with the civilian leaders who might be able to communicate with the people as professional politicians. What is more appalling is that a military ruler with a controversial `mandate' of the people should try to set the rules for the internal democracy of Pakistan's conventional political parties. Not surprisingly, Ms. Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party has quickly responded with a hint that it would re-elect her as its leader even under any rules that the military government might frame. Mr. Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League is less assertive in its reaction but reflects a similar sense of disdain for Gen. Musharraf's dos and don'ts for political parties.

Gen. Musharraf's proposed new state policy marks a negation of democratic ethos. The plan to revive and update the powers of the President to dismiss elected Prime Ministers and dissolve legislatures suggests a clueless lurch to a previous era of politics without fair play. A device with a more corrosive impact on the `constitutional' evolution of Pakistan is the new initiative for a National Security Council as the ostensible forum for checks and balances at the highest echelon of governance. While the Pakistanis are no strangers to this formula, which redefines the old military-civilian establishment, the latest move by Gen. Musharraf to sustain his supervision of the political process beyond the promised general election can hardly be concealed, given that the council would bring together not only the President and the (future) Prime Minister but also the military chief.

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