Last week many lawyers in Pakistan observed a black day to protest against Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s decision to remain COAS. From a constitutional perspective the principle of the lawyers’ protest cannot be contested. If internal battling, at various degrees, between the weak and strong democratic and establishment’s institutions, is part of the problem then the solution must include an end to the battling. Given what the power equation is between the establishment and Pakistan’s political forces continued battling would only further weaken the existing forces. The stronger establishment too has learned that stability and credibility cannot be induced into the power structure through mere battling and manipulation of political forces.
Meanwhile contrasting with the Bar Council’s protest call was president’s near jubilant assertion. He told a visiting Canadian delegation: “A system of real democracy is in place in Pakistan with the full participation of people who have been empowered like never before in the country’s history.”
Gen. Musharraf is not entirely right. A democratic environment with unprecedented freedom of expression and association does exist. Yet the other crucial prerequisites of a “system of real democracy” are missing. These include assemblies and Senate which function according to unbending rules, an autonomous Election Commission, an independent and incorruptible judiciary and a presidency that is incontestably bipartisan and guards the credibility of the state.
In Pakistan most of these elements are missing. Instead power is heavily concentrated in the presidency. There are virtually no institutionalized checks on the president’s powers. He fully understands the internal and external security challenges Pakistan faces and he also takes advice from his military and civilian teams. Nevertheless institutionally the president remains beyond reproach. And Pakistan does not yet have a credibly functioning democratic structure in place.
And the other noninstitutionalized force that can potentially force a check on the presidential powers does not exist. That force would be a unified group of all political parties. Their collective pressure on the Legal Framework Order produced a relatively watered down 17th Amendment.
It reduced the National Security Council to a parliamentary instead of a constitutionally ratified body. It however provided technical legitimacy to the president, split the opposition and finally ended the political bond between the MMA and the establishment.
More recently over the issue of the president staying on as COAS, there have been unprecedented direct and indirect contacts between the establishment and the opposition parties.
Clearly there is no black and white or even instant solution to the two related problems that have persisted within the overall context of state and politics in Pakistan. First, the institutionalization of state and political power in accordance with set principles enshrined in the constitution. It is this institutionalization that ensures the necessary checks and counterchecks to the exercise of state power and political power.
The second related problem has been the distrust between the establishment and the politicians. This distrust evolved as a civil and military bureaucracy saw itself the main protectors of a country that at birth faced real problems of security and survival.
The military dictator Gen. Zia ul-Haq was the first to pull the military into direct politics. He overthrew and then carried out the popularly elected Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s judicial murder. In doing so the military dictator prevented ballot accountability to take root. And yet political parties that sought military intervention facilitated Zia’s destruction of an evolving democratic system.
So far Pakistan’s power scene and political scene has moved in circles. This time though there has been a difference. The 1999-onward period of military’s control of all levers of state and judicial power, control of politics and indirect control of the Parliament has established that political re-engineering does not yield “clean politics.” Also that no amount of foreign support can be translated into political credibility on the domestic front.
For the politicians the lesson is that power cannot immediately wrested from those who control almost all levers of state power.
That in fact wresting power, for as long as there are willing establishment partners, is a near impossibility. There is also a general realization that the country needs some arrangement between the politicians and the establishment to create conditions for institutionalized democracy. Pakistan today has a hybrid system that exists in which the COAS president may control levers of power, but does not control the dynamics of power. And the politicians do not control levers of power but they now have an opening to influence the dynamics of state power and political power.
In the parallel actions of dispute, dialogue and power contest lie the possibility for Pakistan to finally address the chronic problems of absence of institutionalized democracy and civil-military relations. However the onus to systematically resolve these chronic problems rests on the Musharraf-led establishment.
— Nasim Zehra is a fellow of the Harvard University Asia Center.
