Updating the ’73 constitution

Islamabad diary
Our exceptional quality of governance has to be admired. The prime minister sets up a high-powered committee to “resolve the issue of undue fee hike by private schools.” Not long ago such an issue would have been settled by the local deputy commissioner. Now it takes Pakistan’s heavily-elected prime minister to address it.
My morning paper also informs me that the PM chairs yet another meeting on the energy crisis and quotes him as saying: “…the country cannot afford power load-shedding for longer period of time since the economic betterment and comfort of the common man is linked with it.” Ye gods, have mercy on us. The meeting disperses, with the energy crisis exactly where it was before it started.
The interior minister, the PML-N’s gift to brevity – in a country given to longwinded statements he yet takes the prize – addresses another press conference (the man is fond of them) at which, characteristically, he manages to say almost nothing. This is a neat division of labour: the army fights terrorism, the interior minister addresses press conferences. And he is supposed to be amongst the brightest in this lot.
I forget. While the PM is at it, why hasn’t he addressed that other momentous issue: selecting the right market-place in Islamabad – sector this or that – for sacrificial animals on the occasion of Eidul Fitr? Doesn’t this also call for a cabinet-level committee?
And it’s going to be close to three years and the government can’t make up its mind about the ban on YouTube. Decisiveness, thy name is the government of the heavy mandate.
If these geniuses had their wits about them, they would have declared war on terrorism before the army did. But they had other priorities – mega-projects and metro-buses and foreign trips that to the average Pakistani looked more like private business visits than anything else. Now with Gen Raheel Sharif’s star in the ascendant – with even the political class reluctantly beginning to acknowledge his popular standing – you have to see their long faces.
It’s a safe bet that between now and next November when the general’s term is up, this government will have a single-item agenda: fervent prayers seeking divine help for the safe exit of their nemesis. He is the spectre at their feast, the ghost at the table, who has spoiled their feast for them. With real decision-making gravitating to the army, and the army chief’s hosannas being sung all around, no wonder the PM is seized with issues like undue tuition fees.
Exile and wilderness would be preferable to this power. But these are survivors who have been around for a long time, tutored in the hard school of patience. They think they are playing the long game, banking on the device left to them: out-waiting the general.
Three-time PM and if anyone thinks this is exceptional luck, consider also the bad luck interwoven into these high exercises of authority. Nawaz Sharif spent his first term praying for the exit of then president Ghulam Ishaq Khan. His second term was spoiled by Pervez Musharraf. His exile in Saudi Arabia and later London was spent pining for his destruction. His third term has been spoilt, irrecoverably spoilt, by another man at arms. Of what use power if drunk from such poisoned chalices?
For most mortals, better than this would be to ride out into the desert and take up residence at a shrine. But this is a tough breed and power of whatever sort, poisoned or otherwise, has meant everything to them…the path to riches and glory.
So they cling to it, even if it is the shadow of power, nursing the hope that over the long-term they will prevail even if for the present they are putting up with greater embarrassment than ever before.
The tussle with Ghulam Ishaq Khan made Nawaz Sharif a popular politician and the PML-N a popular party. Exile at Musharraf’s hands transformed Nawaz Sharif into a symbol of democracy and even of resistance. This may sound funny today but that’s how it was at the time. But this third stint is bringing no such reward. It is only bringing embarrassment.
No tanks have moved; no 111 Brigade has swung into action. But the hollowness of the elected dispensation is being exposed with no mitigating circumstances…no compensation in the form of political martyrdom. While the army goes about the business of taking on terrorism and cleansing Karachi – and dealing with the likes of Malik Ishaq – the knights are left to twist in the wind…and look into the far distance.
That this is turning into a farce is plain to see. How long can it last?
Thanks to army action in Fata and Karachi, Pakistan is all right for the moment. But what happens afterwards? What guarantee is there that the present course is followed, with the same singleness of mind and purpose? These are the questions agitating the public.
A constitution is only as good as the goods it produces. We can hold as many elections as we like. We’ll still get the same paladins of democracy, knights of the mandate and so on. Whether politicians are more corrupt than champions in other fields is beside the point. Politicians have failed the acid test of leadership.
Raheel Sharif has not created space for himself. He has not pushed anyone to the wall. The vacuum was already there, created by fecklessness and incapacity. The general merely stepped into the breach, shouldering responsibility that should have been the province of others. It is not through any Goebbels-like trick that the army has won public support. Public acclaim followed the army’s actions.
Let’s be plain about one thing. We know the wages of dictatorship but what did democracy, the variant of it here, deliver? Licence and freedom for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, licence and freedom for the MQM, licence and freedom for the various ruling coteries to carry on loot and plunder. All this was accomplished in the name of that motto made inviolate and sacred by endless repetition: continuity of democracy.
This was the hymn song sung when Pakistan lay at the mercy of religion-spouting terrorists who were not above cutting the heads of soldiers of the Pakistan Army and the Frontier Corps and playing football with them…and when Karachi lay in the grip of its own kind of terror. The political leadership held out olive branches to these football players. And the best of politicians made it a holy creed to hide their wealth abroad. And people were not supposed to open their mouths because democracy was being preserved and strengthened.
Such democracy has brought ruin to countries stronger than ours. Such a democracy ruined Russia before Vladimir Putin, no one’s description of an ideal democrat, came forward to stop the slide and save his country.
So what dream world are Pakistan’s democrats living in? Do they want a return to that laissez faire period when leading politicians went into deep mourning at the death of the TTP leader, Hakeemullah Mehsud? Do they want Peshawar to once again become a beleaguered city? Do they want the Rabita Committee to again become Karachi’s true corps headquarters?
How to solidify the present? This is Pakistan’s foremost need…best ensured by constitutional changes envisaging a directly-elected president with meaningful power. Sham, money-tainted democracy has already run its course. It’s time to move ahead.
Gen Zia injected a booster shot of Islamisation into the 1973 constitution and no one complained. A directly-elected president will not alter the democratic provisions of the constitution (although I wish someone were to have the guts to do away with the protection granted to the Hudood Ordinance). So on that score why should there be any grounds for complaint?
Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com