ISLAMABAD, 19 April 2004 — In the last one week so many have spoken and so differently. Prime Minister Jamali said President Musharraf’s uniform will go, the break away PPP faction has repeatedly insisted that it should stay “in the national interest” and the president himself in his BBC Hard talk recorded on April 9 said he was confused about the issue.
Finally though the information minister has spoken on behalf of the president to say the matter is settled, the president will abide by the 17th Amendment and will only hold one office.
This statement notwithstanding, issues about Musharraf-engineered democracy will remain. Musharraf oversees a quasi-democratic system that he maintains he will turn into a “genuine democracy.” While on internal security, foreign policy and economy fronts, the president has demonstrated skill and understanding of national interest, his “project political engineering” remains highly controversial.
Although the advantages of the devolution plan, the existence of a representative Parliament and the passage of the controversial Legal Framework Order cannot be denied, serious criticism about the current power play remains. It includes concentration of excessive power in one man, the undermining of the Parliament through the formation of NSC, using the threat of deportation and imprisonment to discourage Shahbaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto returning to Pakistan. But the establishment’s “political re-engineering” agenda continues. Elected parliamentarians are gravitating toward the establishment.
Unless some major unforeseen event takes place the establishment’s agenda of creating a two-party system, along with MQM and the MMA and actively marginalizing Benazir and Nawaz Sharif, will continue. There are no indications of any anti-Musharraf or anti-army civilian political movement emerging. Pakistan’s politicians having psychologically grown up in the shadow of the khaki and often external crutches see Musharraf and America as the winning combination. Many politicians think that Musharraf, the military democrat-dictator, has also encouraged political freedom within prescribed limits.
The present civil-military relations remain at the heart of Pakistan’s chronic political stability and a weak state structure. Yet ironically it would take a military, not civilian man to stabilize this relationship, to ensure that this relationship is conducted in accordance with “constitutional rules of the game.”
Sustainable confidence-building between civilians and military would be the result of a process in which the uniformed bridge builder demonstrates adherence to the rule of law. Musharraf slotted himself in that role when he delivered his Oct. 17 1999 landmark speech that won him peoples’ support. Since then, he has greatly deviated from his objectives.
Must we conclude that no matter who sits at the top the “more it changes the more it is the same” in Pakistani politics?
Unfortunately, given the state of Pakistani politics, the nature of the rule of law, we have no choice but to continue to let Musharraf have his way. His key test of credibility will come in December. He must say good-bye to his COAS post. As for the politicians who advocate he stay on as COAS they are the ones who, with Pakistan’s military dictators, have perpetuated the civil-military divide within Pakistan. Musharraf will have served Pakistan well only if he would break this pattern. Or else he will go down as merely another military dictator wanting to cling to power.
— Nasim Zehra is Harvard Fellow, Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge, Mass.
