The central actor

Our political structure has seldom appeared more brittle. Political parties are at each other’s throats just as the religious groups always were; and now the provincial assemblies too seem at daggers drawn.

Recently the Sindh Assembly lambasted the centre for discriminating against Sindh (in apportioning electricity). In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, the rival party governments miss no opportunity to denigrate the other’s performance prompting many to ask where all this is leading to. To compound the confusion there is the Jang/GEO v ISI fracas, with a dithering central government unable to decide whether to be ruled by its head, and back the ISI, or its heart which is demonstrably with Geo.

Another troubling phenomenon is the glaring leadership vacuum that exists at the strategic level which, try as he may, Nawaz Sharif somehow cannot fill. So too, the impotence of a blocked political system that is incapable of change and, to top it all, there is an additional woe – something many thought had been put to rest with the departure of Musharraf – the question of civilian supremacy.

At about the time the 18th Amendment was being passed I recall a parliamentary luminary boasting that the future showed that the army had no future in politics. When I cautioned against such naiveté he threw a tantrum. However, I persisted. Regardless of what the situation may look like, I said, the fact is that our soldiers believe they need to step in from time to time when things go awry by virtue of being the ex officio guardians of the people and the ideological and other values of the state.

In their view, I said, politics was far too serious a matter to be left to politicians. They made this clear in 1958 and continued to make the point every ten years or so lest, we forget. And as it happens, I said, the public were fully behind them. My interlocutor dismissed these remarks as just more babu-ese.

Benazir Bhutto, who was light years more intelligent than most politicians, conceded that the military was the central actor in political life of the country which was why during her second term she was so skittish when dealing with generals. She constantly sought out General Waheed Kakar less for his advice and more for his blessings and, to a much lesser extent, continued the same approach with General Jahangir Karamat, until the rupture of her relations with Leghari forced Karamat’s hand as he had to choose between his boss, Farooq Leghari and BB. Of course, had Karamat picked BB, and refused to recognise her dismissal by Leghari, that would have amounted to a coup on its own.

BB’s Anglo-American brokered ‘deal’ with Musharraf was more evidence of her belief that without the military on board any agreement would have been worthless regardless of her popularity with the masses. BB’s first term had taught her that politicians should not wrestle with the army and if it ever came to that, then not to fight savagely and publicly but surreptitiously. Joining in the public humiliation of the army was never in her repertoire of tactics.

That is not to say that BB would have been content to depend on constitutional authority alone. In Pakistan law – any law – changes meaning and purpose according to the power of the group that applies or violates it. Everything eventually turns out to be not a balancing act of legal rights but a confrontation of pure power. Successful leaders must learn the job as they go on. They must know that solid pillars of society can be transformed overnight into dangerous subversives.

In Pakistan the military is the pivot on which the entire mechanism of the federation is balanced. Its influence on all spheres of policy is pervasive and yes, at times, suffocating. But without the military to keep adversaries at bay this country would have floundered long ago. The trouble is that the end may be no different with the military in charge unless the military undergoes a conceptual transformation and is embedded in a new culture which, in a manner of speaking, is what the present debate should be all about but, alas, it is not.

“The job of the army of a state possessing nuclear weapons”, says a former army commander, “is no longer external warfare but domestic warfare, counterinsurgency, pacification programmes, peace keeping” and also, when needed, peacemaking. In other words, the military’s foremost duty is no longer guarding the frontiers against foreign enemies but the homeland against domestic foes.

To be able to do that the army’s cooperation with the government of the day has to be multifaceted, wide ranging and intense which is why it’s naïve to think the army will remain sanitised from politics when so much of its domestic ‘war’ strategy involves public dealing – and hence politics. The army has to be involved in peacemaking and, given the peculiar nature of the current insurgency, the former more than the latter will lead the conversation from the government side. The abortive earlier deals concluded with the TTP were negotiated by the army and if the current round of parleys is being managed by the interior minister, he would be a greater fool than he looks if he did not make sure the words of the army were heeded.

How the current and needless government-army tussle will end is anybody’s guess. However, there are two aspects that are worth reiterating before they get lost in the din that accompanies debate in our society and before demonstrators take to the streets.

First, the constitution of a country is made for the smooth functioning of the state paraphernalia and for our benefit and not vice versa. Hence, the constitution cannot make itself superior to society. Second, what is constitutional may still be unwise. Thus, judicial activism – though strictly speaking constitutional – was not wise.

Notwithstanding the virtues of our electoral democracy, the fact is that it is not working. It has failed to deliver. And that’s one reason why the middle class, long considered the linchpin to successful democratisation, are turning away from democracy. They have seen democracy produce chaos, corruption and weak growth. They see elected leaders maintain a disdain for the law and worry about the consequences to themselves and their businesses.

On the other hand, they see authoritarian regimes offering advantages for growth by pursuing sensible economic policies without being captured by the political process. They believe uniformed dictators can impose much needed and timely hardship on the people since they do not have to survive the test of elections and very quickly reach the conclusion that the regime must go; they are, sadly, willing to use any means to topple the regime.

According to one foreign publication, “roughly 60 percent of respondents in a comprehensive regional survey said the country should be ruled by the army, one of the highest votes of support for the military rule anywhere in the world”.

On May 11, we saw the middle class marching not for democracy, as they did some years ago, but really against democracy. Ironically, in doing so they turned against their (mostly) elected leaders in the hope of saving democracy. Is history about to repeat itself ‘first as a tragedy and then a farce’?

The writer is a former ambassador.  Email: charles123it@hotmail.com