Opinion - Editorials

Traumatised Pakistan

The sordid story of an unravelling civil society and disintegrating institutional framework continues unabated in Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf’s announcement on Sunday that parliamentary elections would be held before January 9, next year, has done nothing really to ease the sharp uncertainty and disappointment in regard to his disastrous decision of November 3 to impose Emergency. The announcement of elections came in response to pressure from Washington, wh ich was evidently embarrassed by the sharp swing to an openly authoritarian dispensation on the part of an ally it deems critical in its war on terror. But the President’s assurance of early elections has not helped to mitigate concerns that democracy is being snuffed out. While trotting out the invariable excuses that the Emergency was imposed because of terrorism and the actions of the judiciary, which in his view, had compromised the battle against rising militancy, General Musharraf refused to set a date for the ending of the Emergency. The General clearly envisages the elections taking place under the auspices of a pliant Election Commission and away from the inconvenient scrutiny of the judiciary, with most of the judges, starting with the ousted Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhary, remaining under arrest. Adding to the sense that rather than an Emergency, a martial law regime is in place, is a disconcerting ordinance promulgated last Saturday enabling the military to prosecute civilians on various charges, sweepingly worded, including ominously, an “assault on the President with the intention of disrupting the exercise of his powers.” This conferring of absolutist powers on General Musharraf and the Pakistan Army bodes ill for a return to the democratic framework even as it raises fears that this ordinance will be used to settle scores with General Musharraf’s numerous political opponents including lawyers, journalists, and human rights activists.

For her part, the Pakistan People’s Party leader, Benazir Bhutto, has done her usual balancing act — welcoming General Musharraf’s promise of elections in January as a positive sign, she also expressed her misgivings that elections held in the shadow of the Emergency could not be free and fair. Ms Bhutto’s relatively cautious stance has given space for some murmurs that her opposition to the Musharraf regime is not as categorical and as sharp as it ought to be especially when contrasted with the angry denunciations of General Musharraf’s actions by her political rivals, such as the forcibly deported Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League(N), and the Tehreek-e-Insaf leader, Imran Khan, now in hiding. Yet for now, Ms Bhutto is lending her presence to the swelling crowds of protesting lawyers and activists jamming the streets, and the heartening spectacle of ordinary Pakistanis standing up for their rights and fighting back the batons of the police as they determinedly surge ahead, remains the best hope for the return of democracy in Pakistan. The people of Pakistan must have their sights set firmly on three goals — the lifting of the Emergency, the restoration of basic civil liberties and more importantly, guaranteeing the independence of the judiciary. Only then can their struggle for democracy have real purpose.

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