BackBetween coup and constitution in Pakistan
Between coup and constitution in Pakistan
PremiumPakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani waves upon his arrival at the Supreme Court in Islamabad on 19 January. AP
Pakistan will awaken to a clear political sky on Friday. On 10 January, a bench of the Supreme Court virtually gave an ultimatum to the Yousaf Raza Gilani government. Since then, not a day has passed without speculation of a coup or pincer movement by the judiciary and the military to oust the country’s elected government. The Gilani government, too, has left no opportunity to heighten tensions. From berating the country’s army chief to a parliamentary vote to bolster his position, the prime minister has tried everything at hand.
On Thursday, after appearing in the apex court to face a contempt of court notice, matters cooled down considerably. Gilani has been exempted from personal appearances and the matter has been adjourned till 1 February.
The other case, the so-called “memogate" case, again involves Zardari. In the past one year, there has been persistent speculation that Pakistan army, and Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani in particular, want to oust Zardari. At one point, the country’s ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, allegedly handed over a secret memo, through an intermediary, to Admiral Mike Mullen, then the top US military official. The memo outlined steps the government would take in return for US help in ensuring that Kayani did not mount a coup. Among other things, it promised the US a free hand in chasing terrorists in Pakistan and dismantling the notorious “S" section of the Inter-Services Intelligence. The apex court has created a commission of inquiry to probe the matter.
Viewed together, both pose a formidable threat to the government and Zardari in particular. If the Gilani government survives, it will be a political miracle. So far, the prime minister has been defiant at each step. But in Pakistan, such defiance does not amount much. One famous example, from an earlier age, was that of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto inserting a provision in the 1973 Constitution making military interventions in politics unconstitutional. It did not work. Taking names is invidious, but the army has already propped a potential replacement for Gilani. In this, it is following tradition. From Dr Khan Sahib in 1955 (under the patronage of the then governor-general Iskander Mirza) to Muhammad Khan Junejo (under Zia-ul-Haq) to Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali (under Pervez Musharraf), prime ministers are mere playthings for army chiefs: it is the latter under whose “pleasure" prime ministers serve and not the other way around. Those who tried otherwise either went to the gallows (Bhutto) or were exiled (Nawaz Sharif). It is not clear how Gilani is an exception.
One could say things have changed. After the democratic upsurge of 2007, when lawyers, students, doctors and much of urban Pakistan took to the roads, democracy seems to have acquired a sounder footing. One can only say this is a lapse of memory. If anything, the same class of people took to the streets—and in much bigger numbers—against a much more formidable dictator in 1969. His name was Ayub Khan. Zia-ul-Haq was just eight years in the future.
The fact is Pakistan is a broken country. And the army (and the bureaucracy and the judiciary) broke the political system a long ago—from 1952 to 1958. Today, those who look to the judiciary as a saviour of democracy only have to look back at its record. In 1954, the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan was dismissed. When the speaker of the assembly, Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan, managed to get the decision overturned by the Sindh high court, the chief justice, Muhammad Munir, colluded with the bureaucracy to overrule the decision on a technical ground. From that vantage, there is nothing new in judges and soldiers getting together to dislodge a perfectly legal government.
Gilani’s problems lie elsewhere. Today any politician who gets elected to high office in Pakistan knows it very well that his time is limited. The limit is not imposed by an electoral calendar or parliamentary majority: it depends on when the army decides to come out of the barracks. So the best anyone can do is to make the best of it as long as luck lasts. Seen thus, his master is not behaving in an irrational manner. It is another matter that what is rational for a politician with a short time horizon may not be rational for Pakistan. The prime minister confronts a legacy of broken institutions and hideously mutated politics. True, Gen. Kayani is unlikely to declare himself chief martial law administrator and the Supreme Court is unlikely to invoke the doctrine of necessity, but that does not exhaust the scope of praetorianism in Pakistan.
Siddharth Singh is Editor (Views) at Mint
Comment at views@livemint.com
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