Civ-mil disquiet

“For the past two years [almost], I have been watching with deepest anxiety the ruthless struggle for power, corruption, the shameful exploitation of our simple, honest, patriotic and industrious masses, the lack of decorum and the prostitution of Islam for political ends. Such despicable activities have created a dictatorship of the lowest order. The mentality of the politicians has sunk so low that I am unable to any longer believe that elections will improve the present chaotic situation. What Pakistan needs is not elections but freedom from political adventurers, (money launderers), smugglers, (tax evaders), (land grabbers) black marketers and hoarders.

“The army has [of late] kept severely aloof from politics; but left to the politicians, a perfectly sound country has become the laughingstock of the world. I have thus decided to impose martial law in the country. Under military [rule], local political headaches will no longer distract from our immediate challenges of providing a stable and a secure state to its people. We will honour our international commitments to their fullest and ensure an environment of social justice while [reinvigorating a sullen economy]. The ultimate aim of the military regime will be to restore democracy but a democracy people can understand and [trust]. But first, the country needs to be put on an even keel by eradicating disruptionists, opportunists and [money launderers]; the social vermin of whom soldiers and people alike were sick and tired. History would not have forgiven us if the present chaotic conditions were allowed to go on any further.”

How’s that for an inaugural address by a military chief on the eve of imposing martial law in the country? It may be unfortunate to have reached such a turn in our political experience – yet again – but with the harsh realities of a system gone awry with dysfunctional institutions of governance, there just may stand no alternative.

I, as the writer, am equally conscious of readying a draft for an adventurer who may begin to have ideas considering the slide and shocks which threaten the state and the nation in our existing morass as inattention to matters of governance and intra- and inter-institutional confrontations threaten to uproot the complete political and economic order. Could it be that one such address is just about getting ready in some office of this republic as the plight mimics the sentiments reflected in the address above? May we pause for a moment from our fiddling the state and instead reflect on an alternative reality which may otherwise hound us no end to an uncertain future?

There is a brief redemption though: the above quoted speech is from Pakistan’s history, not something made up to assist the next military adventurer. The words in brackets are mine, added to give the speech some relevance to our current bane, and hopefully raise some alarm in how the events are progressing and where they may lead to unless a corrective intervention can be made right now to arrest the slide. But the speech is ominous in how truly it addresses our predicament. It could easily fill in for contemporary times; and that is a scary thought given how the alternate system of governance is historically so prone to act. This speech is from 59 years back when the then president Sikandar Mirza, and General Ayub Khan, the army chief, imposed the first nation-wide martial law. I have combined parts of the two speeches into a composite whole. Ayesha Jalal carries these in her book, ‘The struggle for Pakistan’.

There is something else that Jalal states from the 1958 experience which should bother us: “Ordinary citizens were gratified to see martial law authorities wielding the stick against shopkeepers who, fearing punishment for overpricing, adopted a code of fair practice. Prices dropped; smuggled goods vanished… and medicines in short supply became readily available. The streets were cleaner, with fewer beggars in sight.” And so on.

And then: “the politically more sophisticated, however, worried about the implications of the army action, pointing out that Pakistan’s problems were far more complicated [in 1958!] and that the generals might find it difficult to relinquish power to the civilians.” Sadly, all of it sits just right to the tee in today’s environment while the consequences that the thirteen-year spate of two martial laws in continuity rendered the country to, as an implication, remain even today an inalienable truth. That is the danger.

Our problem as a nation has been the denialist’s approach to warding off martial law. Rather than tend to what conditions engender a threat of unconventional rule, we have spent the many decades since scaring one away. The combined lament of the democrats, or pseudo-democrats – for neither real democracy exists in this country nor has one been ever practised – has been to only pillory military rule without an iota of attention in instituting practices that ensure full democracy. Our troubles with democracy are many but beginning and ending with just one facet – electing its rulers – democracy stutters to fulfil its remaining obligations, of returning service to the masses. This remains abhorrently absent from the nominal democratic tradition of Pakistan. The leadership and ruling elites are patently self-serving.

Most of these democratic eras were marked with institutional decay which rather than act as a check on the mal-practising political system became their handmaidens over time to cover massive corruption under them. Every such period of misrule only meant that the common man stood comprehensively neglected, instituting poverty and dispossession in that class as their inevitable and perennial fate. The constituency for democracy thus never strengthened to the point where the need for an alternate governance model was no more. Periodically the poor and deprived have looked to the alternate system of governance, this from the military, in a hope to improve their lot.

The year 2017 may not be 1958 – or 1977 or 1999 – and the military too may have developed encouraging resilience to its trigger impulse to intervene on the slightest pretext, but the political and democratic environment too has hardly moved from where it stood in the 1950s and 1990s. That is perhaps the most telling aspect in revisiting what was said on the eve of the 1958 martial law and what could as easily be said again in 2017. The political elites have only used people power to further their own interests, never to serve the people who had placed their trust in them.

Pakistan’s entire political and economic edifice is under stress for such inefficiency and exploitation of power in furtherance of only elite interests. This is when alternative recourse gains eminence. To avoid the abject eventuality of an unwelcome adventurer repeating the above address to the nation, politicians will have to rise above their pettiness to serve the poor masses in whose name they exercise their power. Till that happens, the draft is ready to be read out.

Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com