By Shamshad Ahmad
Historically, different social arrangements and legal structures have warranted different forms of leadership and governance. Leadership is always a complicated amalgam of an individual personality, needs and expectations of a community and exigencies of the age.
Plato's preferred ruler was 'the philosopher king' provided there is such a "superior person who could rule with perfect wisdom and justice." For Aristotle, good governance was a relative matter as there is no best form for all peoples at all times. He differentiated between the 'lawful monarch' and 'willful tyrant,' and favoured a government that sought the welfare of the people.
In imperial China, Han Fei Tzu idealised the leader as a distant figure of enlightened subtlety, who kept very close counsel and ruled not by virtue but by law. The legendary Lycurgus, depicted by Plutarch, inaugurated in Sparta a systematic society where virtue and law were one to ensure the good of the community. For Ibn Khaldun, the great 14th-century Arab social scientist, an ideal leader is a gentle person whose mission is to promote the interests of his subjects.
Machiavelli's concept of leadership relied more on the ends rather than the means. His prince had to be strong, pragmatic and ruthless enough to unite the then city states of Italy. In the absence of virtuous citizens, he believed, there are only "corrupt masses", who can be controlled only by a prince through his "deceitful and vicious behaviour".
There may be no ideal state but in his Social Contract, Rousseau visualised his own ideal of a state with democratic system in which the sovereign power rests with the people, for they alone are in possession of an inalienable "general will". In his view, only a popularly elected government can implement the general will. Hegel, a 19th-century philosopher, glorified the state power beyond limits but also recognised people's general will.
With such an array of thoughts influencing human minds since the emergence of nation state, the world has experienced all forms of political systems ranging from monarchies to republics; from aristocracies to oligarchies and from tyranny to democracy. After centuries of trial and error, democracy emerged as the universally preferred choice, and is now considered the most prevalent model of our era.
Yet, history is also replete with tales of political figures who not only equated themselves with the state but also viewed their reign as a mere extension of their own egos and idiosyncrasies. Even today, there is no dearth of willful rulers of all sorts, elected or unelected, civilian or military, casting their shadows across the world. But in Pakistan, we have never been without crisis of leadership and governance.
The nature and form of our political system has long been the subject of debate in our country with no clarity in our minds regarding the system that suits us most. At the time of our independence, we inherited a parliamentary tradition but soon lost track, groping in the maze of political chaos and confusion. Since then, we have been experimenting with distorted versions of different systems at different times and some times all at the same time.
For decades, we have had a parliamentary system with our parliament never functioning as a sovereign body or playing any role in the country's decision-making. It has never made laws nor has it ever undone the wrongs done to the constitution by successive willful rulers. This regretfully has been the case even when our politicians are in power as they are now. Today again, it is our president, not the prime minister who embodies power. We only wear a parliamentary mask.
We have been experimenting with our own version of presidential system, at times under chief martial law administrators, including a civilian one, with no precedent in the world's history and also with no relevance to the established models of world's known republics. Pakistan today is a laughing stock of the world. Ours is the only parliament which remains at the beck and call of one individual. Legislating is a business beyond its capacity and alien to the temperament of its members.
Democracy, pluralism, good governance, rule of law, separation of powers, institutional integrity, and normative standards are of no relevance to political illiterates of our country. They are doing things in the name of democracy that no other country in the world has ever experimented. With an ingrained culture of political opportunism and ineptitude we have yet to discover a theory of state and methods of government which will suit the genius of our nation. Our present neither-parliamentary-nor-presidential system has no parallel in political philosophy or contemporary history.
The closest to this is perhaps the Machiavellian princedom which is premised on the infamous "doctrine of necessity." Machiavelli's prince must have a "hypocritical and vacillating" personality wearing only the face of "mercy, faith, integrity, humanity, and religion" to create a public image, but in practice often acting contrary to those very ideals. He is either "the child of fortune born into power" or "acquires power through deceit and force."
Pakistan's political history is indeed rich in Machiavellian tradition. The people have had no role in their country's decision-making. Parliaments and elections have been used as the means of serving only selfish group interests or the interests of opportunistic feudal, moneyed, law-evading, land-grabbing, loan-defaulting and privileged elites and classes.
Our rulers, civilian or non-civilian, have mostly been contemptuous of the people's sovereign will. They enjoy wielding absolute authority, often reminding us of France's Louis XIV's famous dictum: "L'etat, c'est moi"-- "I am the state." We also know what they consider to be the limits of their power -- nothing. But in Rousseau's words, "the strongest is never strong enough to be always the master."
With Musharraf's departure, the people expected real democracy to return to the country. But that was not to be the case. Our leadership crisis continued. PPP Co-Chairperson, Asif Zardari, while still holding his top party position got himself elected as president in violation of tradition and an ethical code established by the Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah in 1947 when, as governor general, he refused to remain be the head of the Muslim League.
Not only this, Zardari is also holding on to his dictator predecessor's legacy, the 17th Amendment. He had an opportunity of his life to be a man of destiny in Pakistan's history. But like Musharraf, he ignored history. Unlike his own party's iconic Bhutto leaders, he deviated from the democratic path. For an elected president, there is no justification to continue to draw strength from undemocratic instruments of power left behind by a military dictator.
President Zardari has been in office just little over a year but history with its moral force is already registering its accounts, and is judging him fast. It is between history and Zardari now. He already carries an excess baggage of his past. The NRO overhang now adds another ominous dimension. The other day, a televised address from the bunkered presidency showed him huffing and puffing in an unpresidential manner. He didn't have to do that.
Perhaps there was nobody around him sincere enough to tell him that he would have been better off without that performance. If he had a message for anyone, he could have used more appropriate alternative means. He also didn't have to highlight his vulnerability by making unnecessary assertions on his eligibility to hold the highest state office and his ex-officio indemnity.
One thing is clear. Nobody wants to derail the system. President Zardari himself admitted this. But the system must return to the 1973 Constitution as it stood on October 12, 1999. The 17th Amendment must go. He must uphold the rule of law and revert to what PPP's real leaders, the Bhuttos, stood for. That alone will reinforce his moral and legal authority but only as a nominal constitutional head of state.
The writer is a former foreign secretary.