EDITORIAL: Daily Times

Toppling again in the air?

An air of crisis has permeated the national horizon in recent days. Starting with the furore over the Kerry-Lugar bill and extending into the fracas over the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), the feeling is irresistible that moves are afoot to destabilise the democratic system, in the process hoping to deseat President Asif Zardari and either bring the whole post-February 2008 edifice crashing down, or reshaping it to the wishes of the usual cast of anti-democratic suspects. The familiar pattern groups hidden and open characters in this drama. The latter include the opposition, so-called coalition partners of the PPP, and sections of the media, especially the electronic media. The noise and fury emanating from these quarters may or may not signify nothing, but the people of Pakistan and the democratic forces in the polity have always deserved, and continue to deserve, better. What, after all, is the grouse of all the malcontents?

In sum, it could be categorised as umbrage at attempts by the president and the sitting federal government led by the PPP to overcome some of the glaring anomalies embedded in the legacy inherited from praetorian and authoritarian dispensations that litter Pakistan’s history. Take the Kerry-Lugar bill for example. The entire broadside against the bill has focused on alleged intrusive encroachment on Pakistan’s sovereignty, whereas all it says is that the civilian-military relationship, dogged as it is in our history with Bonapartist interventions, should conform to the principle of civilian authority over the military, the leitmotif of all democracies. Of course it also asks the US Executive for certifications to the US Congress on this and a whole host of other issues, for example shutting down the export of jihad from Pakistani soil and ensuring the nuclear proliferation underground network has effectively been shut down. What is objectionable about the US Congress wishing the American Executive to certify that democratic norms are being adhered to in Pakistan? Is that not the longstanding agenda of all the democratic forces in the country? The conclusion is inescapable therefore that the barrage against the Kerry-Lugar bill, much of it misplaced or just plain ignorant, was little else than a concerted and orchestrated effort to destabilise the present dispensation.

This view, alarmist as it may seem to some, is further reinforced by the shrill denunciations of the NRO. The latter may not be the perfect or even desired vehicle of accountability, but that project has been so sullied over successive regimes by partisanship that hardly any high moral ground is left to anyone. The expedient nature of the NRO was dictated by former president General (Retd) Musharraf’s political difficulties from 2007 on. It was an attempt to pull his chestnuts out of the fire and allow him, with the help of one section of the mainstream political forces, i.e. the PPP, to survive on top of the heap. As it turned out of course, the assassination of one of the partners of that political compact in December 2007, Benazir Bhutto, the subsequent general elections of February 2008, and the strengthening of anti-military rule forces put paid to the longevity of our last unlamented Bonaparte.

Surprisingly, parties such as the PML(Q), by no stretch well disposed towards the PPP, and the so-called coalition partners of the government such as the MQM and JUI(F), suddenly sprouted ‘principles’ they had conveniently ignored when the NRO was promulgated by Musharraf, enjoying the relief it offered, and uttering not a word against it till now. And then our politicians wonder why they have eroded their own credibility.

One does not have to hold any brief for the NRO or even the present government to understand the fateful consequences of upsetting the applecart of the present democratic dispensation at the current conjuncture. The whiff of praetorianism is in the ether again, or some version of it that is well camouflaged. That would not be a ‘minus one’, it would be a ‘back to square one’ or even worse. Can a country in the grip of a civil war against terrorism that daily bleeds our people and struggling to revive an economy battered by the global recession afford such adventurism and throwbacks to a dictatorial past that we thought had been buried? *