Why must every scandal cause a section of the media to conclude that the democratic edifice is about to cave in? Why is news no more reported but presented with juicy blandishments? Why are political and institutional rivals ever so prone to trumpeting ‘j’accuse’, forgetting their own acts of omission and commission? And why do the grave social and economic problems of the common man not arouse such rage and fury in the media as does the clash of interests among powerful individuals and institutions; after all, more than six million flood-affected IDPs are helplessly confronted with the onset of a harrowing winter in Sindh.
The one composite answer to these questions is that it is how democracy, particularly a nascent one, works. Indeed, democracy’s cleansing machinery and delivery system are actually fuelled and propelled by the relentless friction between fact and fiction, efficiency and ineptness, integrity and corruption and utility and obsoleteness. The only difference — again subject to politico-cultural peculiarities — is that, in mature democracies, the opposition’s role is to chastise errant governments but protect the system. Here, it is often the other way around. The so-called ‘Memogate’ is a case in point.
A memo was allegedly sent by Ambassador Husain Haqqani through Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani-American businessman, to Admiral Mike Mullen to seek US support for replacing the existing military and intelligence leaderships with a new security team, pledging, inter alia, that the PPP-government would go the whole hog against al Qaeda-Taliban-Haqqani leaders and also bring the nuclear programme under a “more verifiable, transparent regime”.
The memo has generated mainly three questions: is it an attempt to undermine our national sovereignty by colluding with a foreign power to deal with an internal matter? If so, then who is responsible for this act? And, if the responsibility lies beyond Ambassador Haqqani to some higher functionary of the state, then what should be the course of action?
In other words, the first question relates to national and international laws but its connotations are strictly politico-ethical and normative, the second question pertains to the modus operandi needed to get to the truth, using judicial, parliamentary and forensic mechanisms and the third one deals with the political process and institutional capacity to bring the matter to its logical end.
But unfortunately, true to our shallow political culture, all three questions have been enclosed in one casing: a political one. Daggers are already drawn to cut down the ambassador (who has now resigned from his post), if not the president. Conveniently, it has been ignored that the government has pledged an enquiry into the matter, the ambassador offered to resign and stand the enquiry and that applications have also been filed in the Supreme Court (SC) for a judicial probe.
Indeed, some fertile minds have proposed that Memogate to be looked at in the light of Watergate, which forced President Nixon out of the White House. But they ignore the key difference between the two scandals. Watergate was a one-off aberration but its tectonic impact shook the American legal system and political ethics. As a result, President Nixon had to go rather ignominiously. But Memogate is yet another episode in the long tug of war between the civil and military leaderships to control the state and government.
If President Zardari is forced out for his alleged ‘ineptness’ or ‘collusiveness’ with Ambassador Haqqani’s alleged ‘memo’, then there will be questions about those who are accused of being ‘inept’ or ‘collusive’ in the Osama bin Laden case, those who were involved in the infamous ‘Mehrangate’ that sabotaged democracy and constitutionalism and also those who committed Kargil, bringing shame, diplomatic embarrassment and huge losses in human and material terms to the country.
Even if it is supposed that Ambassador Haqqani allegedly sought American intervention to replace the current military leadership, then there are also instances of our establishment soliciting US ‘blessings’ before removing governments and staging coup d’états. For instance, WikiLeaks revealed that during the lawyers’ movement, the army chief informed US Ambassador Anne Peterson that he might replace President Zardari with Asfandyar Wali, the ANP chief.
It is an undeniable, though unfortunate, reality of our political system that the US has been a pivotal factor in important decision-making and execution processes, be it a civilian or a military regime. The only exception in which the US had no direct bearing, at least on the political side of Pakistan, was during the elder Bhutto’s government. But then Bhutto’s defiance cost him his government and life. Undeniably, Bhutto’s nemesis, General Ziaul Haq, could not have survived his 11-year-long dark rule without the consistent financial, political and diplomatic support of the US-led west. And ditto for the post-9/11 General Musharraf.
So, it would be a blunder if the democratic system, for all its ills, is jeopardised because of Memogate, which has a déjà vu air to it. A number of past civilian governments were also dismissed by the establishment for being corrupt, inefficient and even anti-state. The same ‘ethical trap’ is being laid for this one, notwithstanding the fact that none of the deposed rulers was indicted in a court of law. On the contrary, many of the ‘discredited’ politicians soon became part of the B-teams of the military rulers.
But that does not mean no action should be taken on this memo controversy. An inquiry is in order to probe the veracity, motives, characters and responsibilities. But the whole exercise should be within the confines of the law and democratic machinery. The media’s role in this process is particularly crucial, it being a vehicle of digging out facts. But it also needs to guard against coloured reporting that has become a passion of a section of self-styled ‘patriotic’ journalists.
Thank God, now the judiciary is also on the right side of history. His lordship, the chief justice of Pakistan, has recently categorically ruled out legitimising military intervention in any form. Instead, he exhorted the generals to follow the writ of the civilian government.
But alas, now democracy is being threatened by its own supposed guardians, the populists, whose quest to capture power seems to transcend the borders of constitutionalism. The PTI-led forces, and lately the PML-N, are menacingly bracing to use even extra-democratic means to oust this government. Naturally, at this critical hour, Memogate could come to them as a Godsend.
But if the controversy on the memo is turned into a political handle to beat the government down, then the resulting naming and shaming and overt and covert machinations could cause protracted instability, even inviting a direct or indirect ‘intervention’. That the situation could turn really nasty is due to the nature of the current dispensation. Barring the PTI and sections of Islamists and nationalists, a great majority of political parties, groups and individuals are in the federal and provincial governments.
Will they, including possibly the PML-N, leave power so that their nemesis, the PTI-allied forces, capture it? Logic does not suggest so.
The writer is a lawyer and academic. He can be reached at [email protected]