By Ayaz Amir
We can’t work democracy. It seems not to be in our genes. And although we blame conquering generals riding out of General Headquarters for our many ills, every action of ours seems an invitation for another rider to emerge from those hallowed gates — to once again take the nation hostage and sow the seeds of another harvest of lasting discontent.
And while we appear not to be too good at coping with the future, we are forever fighting the battles of the past, excoriating dictators dead and vanished while not paying much attention to those who might be waiting in the wings.
Musharraf’s legacy should have been dealt with swiftly and this task the newly-elected National Assembly should have taken up instead of leaving it to the Supreme Court to wipe history’s slate clean.
The 17th Amendment is not the real issue. It has been made into a bogey which it is not. There are some elements in it which need to be done away with — like giving the president the power to appoint service chiefs, which should really be the prerogative of the prime minister, and the proviso forbidding a third term for someone who’s been prime minister two times — which can be dealt with in an afternoon’s sitting of the National Assembly.
The real issue is Musharraf’s Nov 3 Emergency which needs to be knocked down as an unconstitutional act. But it shouldn’t stop at that. All judges who took oath under Musharraf’s Nov 3 PCO need to have their heads put on the block.
They came to Musharraf’s aid and acted against their fellow lordships. They must pay a price for their duplicity. There is mountain-high muck in the judiciary’s stables. This one step will go a long way to clear it. But we must not lose focus.
Musharraf is only an issue insofar as the symbolism of the past is concerned. Let’s not fool ourselves that any action against him will raise up any insuperable barriers to future riders out of GHQ. Whatever appearances may suggest, and even appearances don’t suggest too much, democracy’s plant is still very fragile and military adventurism very much a living danger.
Who likes to give up power which flourishes in the shadows, power held to no account, account books open to no inspection? There was alarm in the Agency at Aabpaara after the February 18 elections and, if flies-on-the-wall are to be believed, a desultory attempt at document-shredding. But democracy’s knights proving as inept as they have been, and the army regaining lost glory in the hills and valleys of Malakand, the Agency’s boys are back in their stride.
Gone is the gloom of the Musharraf years. The memory of such adventures as the Lal Masjid affair has dimmed. The army chief’s stock has risen and let’s not forget he’s an old Agency hand, with a tighter grip on the Agency’s day-to-day business than most army chiefs before him. So the central conundrum remains. Dealing with Musharraf and heaping scorn on him is no guarantee that the way has been barred for future Musharrafs.
Political wisdom, a huge measure of it, and superior political performance are the only permanent roadblocks to future Bonapartism. Symbolism is important but only up to a point. We should have no illusions on this score. Zardari’s biggest failure is that he’s given ample cause for the knives to be sharpened against him. Even if this was a land free of conspiracies, which it isn’t, Zardari’s unfitness for the office is almost calculated to give birth to conspiracies. Cassius and the other conspirators were jealous of Caesar.
No one is jealous of Zardari. He simply engenders disbelief and encourages dangerous thoughts. But because he is president any action against him will also touch democracy. The architecture of democracy is interlocked. Take out one beam and the structure collapses. And let’s not forget that some of those targeting Zardari don’t really have much of a grouse against him.
They are using him as a decoy and what they are really after is the whole idea of representative government. But as already stated, Zardari is his own worst enemy. Look at the people he’s surrounded himself with. His habits he can’t change, his friends, those he is comfortable with, are from a different time and place.
The presidency is too large a place for him, its portals much too tall for his diminutive figure. Because he looks so out of place, the mantle of president sitting so ill on his shoulders, there is a hard-to-believe (or surreal) quality about the state of the nation today, giving rise to the feeling that what we are experiencing is not reality but something out of a dream sequence. This feeling of unreality is scarcely diminished by such statements as that coming from Prime Minister Gilani that he will now be his own man and that, more than that, he intends to make history.
Let us wish him well but let us also remind him that his own perceived inadequacy has gone a long way to promote the image of a directionless and bumbling government. The PML-N was trying to pump him with steroids right from the beginning.
Some hidden forces, their agenda always dark and secret, seem also now engaged in the same pursuit. Perhaps it is worth remembering that those who make history, first put their shoulders to the wheel. References to history, if at all necessary, are left for later.
The nation is beset with other problems. The anger of the public is rising — a mood fed by prolonged and unexplained power cuts, inflation and joblessness. Incidents of public violence we have lately seen are a dangerous indication of this mood. The preoccupation with Musharraf is therefore not a little unhealthy. He is yesterday’s creature, disgraced and rejected. As already said, his Nov 3 action needs to be denounced and the Supreme Court will be doing the nation a favour if it does this quickly. But we need to move on.
In all of Lenin’s works, in all of Stalin’s writings, there is scarce one reference to the Romanovs or Tsar Nicholas 11. All they speak of are questions of power, of how to preserve it, of how revolutions are made and how they are compromised, of what to do with the land and the peasantry, of what to do with nationalities, etc. Their writings are about the present and the future, not the past.
The greatest responsibility for moving on lies with the National Assembly, a task it has somehow shirked up till now. If PM Gilani is now in a mood to become more active and take his responsibilities more seriously it is high time he did so. The cabinet is oversized and needs to be cut. Only such a step will send the nation a signal that the government is at last getting serious. Reconciliation is a good concept but if it means trying to please everyone all the time it is little better than a watchword for doing nothing. Why do people look up to Justice Chaudhry and the Supreme Court? Because parliament and cabinet are yet to prove their effectiveness.
In fact, the political class needs to wake up, or it will be too late and before we know it horses foaming at the mouth will have emerged from their stables. The knives should not be out for Zardari for that may lead to unpredictable consequences. But for his own sake and the nation’s he needs to have some of his teeth drawn. Some of his powers need to be taken from him. But let us also remember that once this happens — although no one can be sure he will acquiesce in this bloodletting — the time for excuses will be over. We once blamed Musharraf for our troubles. Now Zardari is a catchall excuse for everything. After him, the stream of excuses will run dangerously dry.
The PML-N needs to come out clearly about what needs doing with the 17th Amendment. This should be a clear policy statement cutting through the flimflam and the mist that have come to surround this issue. We need to put constitutional issues behind us and get on with the real issues facing the nation: IDPs, the terror war, the power shortage and the state of the economy.
The dream sequence should finally be over.
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-(Source: The News)-
