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EDITORIAL: 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? *

SECOND EDITORIAL: Missing persons imbroglio

A three-member bench of the Supreme Court directed the high officials of the interior ministry and the police department the other day to step up efforts to trace the persons who went missing during the later years of the Musharraf era. The apex court was responding to a protest camp on the Constitution Avenue in the vicinity of the court premises. The issue of the missing persons has been hanging fire for years now and has many a facet worthy of deeper scrutiny.

The phenomenon of the persons wanted by the government suddenly disappearing into thin air, taken out of the manuals of Sri Lanka and some Latin American governments, first appeared in Pakistan around 2004. While some of the disappeared persons were wanted in connection with religious extremism, a considerable number of the missing persons were members of Baloch and Sindhi nationalist outfits. Apparently, the powerful secret agencies in Pakistan, once granted the expedient of picking up citizens without the obligation of their production before the courts, grabbed the opportunity to vent their old ire against political elements who did not conform to the collective narrative coined by powerful institutions of the state. Ironically, the noise in the political and media circles on the missing persons revolved around those with a religious bent, while the missing nationalist activists were confined to the convenient dungeons of obscurity. Even the “defenders of human rights” in Islamabad do not relish the idea of clubbing the disappearance of nationalist activists from Balochistan and Sindh with that of the so-called soldiers of faith. Interestingly, the self-same custodians of human rights and the rule of law missed no opportunity of bracketing the military operation in Waziristan with the one in Balochistan in order to conflate a purely internal political issue with patent terrorism by local and foreign insurgents.

The present Chief Justice took up the issue of the missing persons in late 2006 and at one point even referred to the possibility of summoning the heads of the ISI and MI if the missing persons were not traced. This observation was reportedly a major plank in the justifications adduced before the international community in connection with the unceremonious sacking of the Chief Justice in March 2007. Interestingly, articles 184, 185 and 199 of the Constitution clearly put the institution of the army beyond the purview of the courts when it comes to national security matters. The catch in the present case lies in the fact that the missing persons are civilian citizens and their families vouch that they have been picked up by the intelligence agencies of the military. Then what is the point in drubbing the civilian authorities for a matter where they wield little or no influence? A former head of a clandestine agency is even on record to have stated that the intelligence agencies cannot dispense with their “professional responsibilities” merely because they are burdened with the law of the land.

Another interesting angle of the problem concerns the apparently innocuous plea of producing the missing persons before the courts. However, the fact that a majority of the advocates of the missing jihadi terrorist suspects were once themselves closely associated with the clandestine security apparatus makes the hazards of spilling the beans in public quite understandable. The issue of missing persons will continue to hang fire if the power structure in the country remains opaque and human, legal and civil rights are practiced more in the breach. *

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