The dictator’s shadow

Accusing someone of faking an illness is the surest way to come off as an insensitive fool. Pervez Musharraf is now 70 years old and must, at a minimum, be suffering from many nagging aches and pain but surely it isn’t too cynical to question how the man who was tweeting photos of himself at the gym last year suddenly fell prey to what we now know are nine medical conditions just minutes before he was due in court.

And then, like everyone who suddenly feels the onset of a heart condition, the dictator leisurely made his way to a hospital run by his powerful former employers rather than rush to places that were closer and arguably of higher quality. Musharraf hasn’t yet presented the legal argument that his medical problems are so severe they can only be treated in a country that hasn’t framed treason charges against him but expect that day to hit us even sooner than Musharraf’s health problems suddenly began to plague him.

Musharraf is guilty as hell but will soon be free as a bird, as the saying goes. That he is guilty of treason as defined in the constitution doesn’t require any explanation. The only arguments his defenders – or to put it more accurately, the defenders of the army’s prerogative to seize overt power – can muster are on the grounds of practicality rather than principle.

So, for example, we are told that Musharraf should be tried by the army rather than the civilians even though Musharraf’s crimes were committed against everyone in the country and not in the field of war or in discharging his duties as a soldier. Then, if deterring future coup aspirants and clipping the ability of the army to take over the reins of power is a serious goal, wouldn’t letting the very institution that is at fault be the judge and jury (though not the executioner since it would never seriously punish one of its own) defeat the purpose of the exercise?

Since Article 6 of the constitution allows for not just the person who has subverted the constitution to be tried for high treason but all those who facilitated said violation, we are told that it simply isn’t fair if only Musharraf has to pay the price for crimes that were abetted by a motley crew of characters, from technocrats like Shaukat Aziz to the politicians of the PML-Q and every other political party that supported Musharraf to, most ominously, then army chief Kayani and the military leadership. “You think you can put Musharraf on trial, just try and do the same with Kayani”, they seem to be sneering.

There is a kernel of an argument in here. One man may be ultimately responsible for dispensing with democracy and the constitution but he only got away with it for so long because he had the help and support of people who put their personal lust for power above the law of the land. In an ideal world, everyone who aided Musharraf would have to face up to their crimes or, at the very least, shunned from positions of power ever again.

Every dictatorship has collaborators and we as a society have chosen to ignore their past misdeeds and wish it away rather than come to a serious reckoning. Few political parties are free of the military taint. Even the PPP, which has been the worst victim of military excesses, was birthed by a man who served under a dictator and called him Pakistan’s Lincoln, Lenin, Ataturk and Saladin.

Then again, ZAB also told Iskander Mirza, who would usher in Ayub Khan’s rule, that objective historians would rate him higher than Jinnah so maybe sycophancy and bad judgement were his greatest crimes. The PPP was also willing to deal with Musharraf when the NRO seemed like it would wipe the slate clean for those of its politicians accused of corruption. This is how it works even for an anti-military party. Convenience has usually trumped ideology.

The PML-N, of course, was Zia’s child but it, like the PPP, now seems to be wary of entangling itself with the military. Smaller, more opportunistic parties like the MQM will never learn simply because they have no reason to. Their base of power is geographically limited so who rules in the centre matters only to the extent that their sphere of influence is acknowledged and left alone.

On strictly constitutional grounds there is no way to avoid the hard truth that all of Musharraf’s collaborators need to be tried under Article 6. But the disruption that would cause to our political system and our fledgling democracy makes it impractical.

The same argument does not apply to Musharraf since he has long retired from active service and the military will survive just him with him in jail. Those in the military who supported his unconstitutional actions will end up avoiding trials and prison, just like the politicians, but even trying Musharraf alone will set a good enough example.

Even this will end up being academic, perhaps in a matter of days, as a combination of behind-the-scenes wrangling and to-our-face lying will lead to Musharraf’s permanent departure from the country he betrayed. About the only small pleasure we can take is that he has had to face a fraction of the same humiliations he inflicted on everyone else and will leave knowing that he is no longer wanted. Schadenfreude may not be a judicially-recognised form of compensation for victims but it is the only victory we’ll have left.

The writer is a journalist based in Karachi. Email: nadir.hassan@gmail.com