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Pakistan’s been here before
The Indian Express ^ | November 30, 2007 | MURTAZA RAZVI

Posted on 11/29/2007 9:14:47 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki

Pakistan’s been here before

MURTAZA RAZVI

Friday, November 30, 2007 at 0000 hrs

It’s only the generals riding the fanciest horses who find this political merry-go-round ride enthralling.

What ails Pakistan today is not Pervez Musharraf, in or out of uniform, nor indeed the lack of a stable political system. These are but symptoms of the graver malaise eating away at the heart of the state: the continued stranglehold of the armed forces over all power. The proposed palliatives — the bitter pills in the form of Musharraf as a civilian president, Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif or the erstwhile king’s party, the Muslim League-Q, as heirs apparent to the throne resting on military boots — are not the answer to the people’s woes. They’ve been there, done that. How many times? They’ve lost count.

The equation of the armed forces’ political and economic interests with those of the country is what the people find most painful. Musharraf’s ‘Pakistan first’ slogan rings hollow when he himself appears to be just a pawn in the bigger scheme of things. He could have bailed out, if not redeemed himself, by stepping down simultaneously as the army chief and president. But that’s not what he did. He has bailed his institution out of politics run amuck, and borne the cross of a civilian presidency with little credibility.

Ditched by his men in khaki, he will now face the music of opposition while the army which was being blamed for everything that went wrong in the past eight years will continue to pull the strings from behind the scenes. So here’s to the Pakistan Army first, and the rest thereafter. The institution has evolved little since its early days of coming to power within years of Pakistan’s independence. It continues to have an insatiable appetite for gobbling up all the other institutions vested with any power, and which it regards as its competitors.

With Musharraf’s resignation from his army post, the military walks away yet again, unscathed, from the mistakes of the past eight years. The burden of all past follies must now be carried by its former chief. The generals will watch him from the wings make a bigger fool of himself, jeering at him with the public as mere spectators. Armed with the power to dissolve the next parliament, but not with the authority any more to proclaim martial law if push comes to shove, Musharraf in the presidency will look like a stand-up comedian who has failed to make his audience laugh.

His is no enviable position to be in — nor is the constitutional amendment enabling him to send parliament packing, the magic wand. The game has taken a life of its own. Superior court judges, even a majority of those brought in to replace the independent-minded ones, will not be as positively disposed towards a civilian president as they had to be towards the army chief-cum-president. Remember President Ghulam Ishaq Khan’s dissolution of the Sharif government in 1993 when he did use the then president’s power to send the government packing?

The current powers vested in the president are a reincarnation of the same old, infamous amendment (Article 58, 2.b.) to the constitution, which the then supreme court, seemingly as compliant as the one now, refused to uphold in the case of the booting out of Sharif by President Ishaq Khan. What happened next? The army stepped in as a saviour, although it remained behind the scenes, to force both the president and PM to step down, and call for a fresh election under a caretaker civilian government of the army’s choosing.

Back then Garrison Pakistan’s management — read municipal services, as it were — was handed over to Benazir Bhutto once again. Two years hence, when President Farooq Leghari of Bhutto’s own party was prevailed upon by the army to dismiss her second government in less than five years, the courts stood by unshaken. Sharif, who was regarded as the lesser evil by the army, was given another chance, this time with a thumping two-thirds majority. When he used that successfully to snatch away the president’s power to dismiss elected governments, the army watched, waiting anxiously to strike him down. It didn’t have to wait for long. The dismissal of the army chief, Pervez Musharraf, by Sharif swung it into action. It retook charge of the garrison state.

The experiment with a civilian municipality serving a garrison state has failed again and again. Pakistan is back at where it was at the dismissal of the first Benazir Bhutto government in 1990. The political arena is open once again to Sharif and Bhutto. The vacuum created by their joint or either party’s possible decision to boycott the January 8 election will be only too readily filled by Musharraf’s loyalist, Muslim League-Q. Musharraf knows too well that without his army uniform on, he can count on the Q-League’s loyalties less than Zia-ul-Haq did on Junejo league’s, which eventually rebelled against him even though Zia had not foolishly doffed his army uniform.

The road ahead is no highway, but an old, beaten track filled with potholes that promise a very bumpy ride, as soon as Musharraf lifts emergency rule, which will have to be sooner than later. Musharraf’s adventurism — which began with Kargil and the overthrow of an elected government and which caused nationalist and Islamist insurgencies to erupt in Balochistan, Islamabad and parts of the Frontier province and went on to the sacking of an independent judiciary — has finally landed him in a thick political soup. Bhutto is still his best bet if she goes ahead to contest elections. Sharif has gone all out to declare that the next election under Musharraf will have no credibility. The Americans still back their trusted friend, but one who has little support left among his people. The army will not bail him out any more, because there are no popular political dividends to be reaped by doing so. The Q-League was inept at defending him when it was in power. It is more ill-equipped now to carry him along as baggage.

Thus the political history of Pakistan keeps going in circles. For the generals riding the fanciest horses it’s an enthralling merry-go-round ride; for the people with their eyes fixed on the spectacle for too long, it’s dizzying.

The writer is an editor with Dawn, Karachi

mrazvi@dawn.com


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: musharraf; pakistan; pakistaniarmy

1 posted on 11/29/2007 9:14:48 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
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To: Grimmy; RedStateRocker; gonzo; DeaconBenjamin; indcons; sukhoi-30mki; Eyes Unclouded; ECM; ...
Pakistan ۋﮧ۱م

FReepmail if you want on or off
2 posted on 11/30/2007 6:25:39 AM PST by G8 Diplomat (Creatures are divided into 6 kingdoms: Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Monera, Protista, & Saudi Arabia)
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