The Fractious Path: Pakistan's Democratic Transition

By Raza Rumi

Since its creation in 1947, Pakistan has oscillated between weak democratic governments and brutal military dictatorships, the latter ruling for about half its existence. In 2013, for the first time, there was a peaceful transfer of power from a democratic government that had completed its tenure to another. The question is: will it last?To understand this, Raza Rumi examines the crucial years between 2008 and 2013, which marked the transition from General Pervez Musharraf's authoritarian regime to a democratic order. Pakistan underwent a series of turbulent events in 2007, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December of that year. Two months later, the elections returned her party to power, putting in place a hybrid military-democratic government. Grappling with the spillover of conflict in Afghanistan, jihadist insurgency and a fragile economy, Pakistan's democracy had to contend with the imbalances inherent to the country's power structure.Reporting from the ground as these political developments were unravelling, Rumi provides a unique window on contemporary Pakistan - its democratic transition, internal security, extremism, governance, foreign policy and the future of democracy in the country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins India
• Release date: May 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9789351777311

Raza Rumi

Raza Ahmad Rumi is a Pakistani policy analyst, journalist and an author. Currently, he is the editor, Daily Times (Pakistan). He is Visiting Faculty at Cornell Institute for Public Affairs and has taught at Ithaca College and New York University. Rumi has been a fellow at United States Institute for Peace and National Endowment for Democracy. Earlier, he worked for the Asian Development Bank as a Governance Specialist and an officer in the Pakistan Administrative Service. Rumi is the author of Delhi by Heart: Impressions of a Pakistani Traveller, The Fractious Path: Pakistan's Democratic Transition and Identity and Faith and Conflict. www.razarumi.com

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Preface

This book is a collection of commentaries that appeared in the Pakistani weekly The News on Sunday during the years 2008-2013. I had been writing in the media since 2005, but it was only in late 2008 that I turned to journalism full-time. During this time, I was Features and News Editor at the weekly The Friday Times, and a columnist for The News and Express Tribune among others. In 2013, I started to host a television current affairs show as well. Sadly, that came to an end in April 2014 when I left the country after escaping an assassination attempt that killed my colleague.

I am aware that there are multiple challenges to publishing an anthology of news commentaries. First, they have lost their immediate relevance. Second, unlike an integrated narrative, the reader’s attention is called to focus on disparate topics. Yet, in the case of Pakistan’s most recent transition to a democracy, I saw true value in collecting an on-the-ground report of the times, both for immediacy and accuracy. Contrary to the global perceptions of Pakistan being a ‘failed’, ‘failing’, ‘martial’, ‘warrior’ or ‘terrorist’ state, these commentaries testify to the diversity and intense struggle of its politicians and civil society to re-orient the country’s present and its future.

Since its inception, Pakistan has oscillated between authoritarian and democratic spells. The civil-military bureaucracy has directly governed the country for more than three decades and the brief periods of democratic rule were turbulent, with civilians enjoying limited powers, given the overarching powers of the unelected institutions.

The years 2008-2013 were a departure from the earlier trends. While the control of the military over key policy areas was intact, Pakistan did inch forward towards a democratic culture, with unprecedented media freedoms, an assertive judiciary and a reformist parliament. The country’s geographical location and the war on terror in its neighbourhood impeded the path towards political stability as the quest for ‘security’ remained the prime concern of the state.

Prior to the democratic transition of 2008, Pakistan underwent a series of traumatic events. In March 2007, General Musharraf fired the chief justice that triggered a lawyers’ movement, soon joined by the civil society and the media. The supreme court restored the top judge and a new phase of confrontation between the executive and the judiciary started which led to the second martial law or emergency by the General in November 2007. Musharraf had reached an understanding with Benazir Bhutto, the leader of Pakistan People’s Party, who ended her decade-long exile and returned to Pakistan in October of the same year. Most significantly, Musharraf was engaged in backchannel negotiations with India towards a realistic settlement on the Kashmir issue. The domestic instability in Pakistan weakened Musharraf; it is said that his Chief of Intelligence General Kayani was not averse to Musharraf’s ouster.

In a tragic development Benazir Bhutto was killed in December 2007, ostensibly by Islamic extremists. The elections were postponed for a month and were held in February 2008 in a climate of uncertainty and national mourning.

The elections resulted in the victory of Pakistan People’s Party and it formed a coalition government with other political parties. Initially, Nawaz Sharif’s party was also a part of the coalition, but that was a short-lived alliance. The allies split over the issue of restoring the chief justice who had been suspended for the second time by Musharraf.

For the next five years, the civilian forces in the parliament and the presidency under Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Bhutto, struggled with the military-dominated state to assert their power. The net result of this continuous power struggle was an increased civilian space in Pakistan. It increased provincial autonomy, thereby addressing the historically problematic issue of federalism.

Pakistan’s love–hate relationship with the United States worsened during this period. The year 2011 was perhaps the worst in a decade-old partnership between the two countries. India-Pakistan relations hit a new low with Pakistan-based jihadists attacking Mumbai in November 2011, and it took a few years for the two states to resume diplomatic engagement.

Yet, within Pakistan, an emerging middle-class voice was beginning to express its discontent. This was best articulated through the powerful electronic media and the rise of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan’s party. By 2013, Khan had begun to challenge the established players and his party made considerable gains in 2013.

The issue of Pakistan’s identity remains unresolved. Over the decades, it has turned into a hybrid theocracy. This is not a simple outcome of the country’s creation in the name of religion, but a conscious choice of its mostly secular rulers to exploit religion for both nation building and power maximization. With the opening of some democratic space, there were intense debates about the direction Pakistan should take. Some of these public battles resulted in violence – the most notable case was Punjab Governor, Salmaan Taseer, being gunned down for his call to amend the blasphemy law. Similarly, a Christian minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, was also killed by the Taliban for the same reason. These incidents only further served to highlight the fact that leaders like Taseer and Bhatti represent the views of a sizeable number of people, many of them devout Muslims, who resent intolerance and religious violence.

This period also saw the rise of the Pakistani Taliban and sectarian militias that target minority sects such as Shias, Ahmadis and non-Muslims. The military cleared out several areas that fell to the Taliban, but it was not ready until 2014 for an all-out operation against the militants’ havens in the country. In part, this was due to the historical relationship between the security establishment and the jihad groups for strategic space in Afghanistan and keeping ‘Indian hegemony’ under check. But the price of these policies was paid by more than 50,000 Pakistanis who were killed across the country. The fragmentation of militias and some of them turning rogue resulted in increased attacks on the Pakistani state itself. The military suffered losses as the militias attacked soldiers and installations across the country. Since 2014, Pakistan has been struggling to change its course vis-à-vis the militias as the cost of its policy of inaction proved to be too high.

Despite their failures and charges of corruption, the major parties collaborated on key governance reforms, avoided playing the game of the military – unlike the decade of the 1990s – and vowed to let the ‘system’ function according to constitutional parameters. This increased assertion of civilian authority was one of the reasons why the 2013 elections were held on time and the government completed its full term. Consequently, a peaceful transfer of power from one democratic government to another took place. This, by itself, is no mean achievement in the history of Pakistan.

I hope that students of Pakistan and South Asia, and lay readers will find this collection useful. Any mistakes and errors of analysis are solely mine.

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DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION

Introduction

Pakistan’s political trajectory is a tale of instability and repeated interruptions of its weak democratic process. Its powerful military directly ruled for over three decades, with brief periods of feeble civilian government rule. The year 2008 was a watershed: the military transferred power to an elected government after nearly a decade-long military rule.

Prior to the National Assembly elections scheduled for 2008, former Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan from exile. In December 2007, during the election campaign, Bhutto was assassinated near the military headquarters in Rawalpindi, a city adjacent to the federal capital, Islamabad. The assassination spurred discontentment in the province of Sindh against the military and Pakistani nationalism. In these circumstances, the elections of February 2008, in large measure, served to quell the growing unease. Pakistan People’s Party emerged as the largest party in the legislature and formed a coalition government first with Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz. President Pervez Musharraf, facing prospects of impeachment, resigned from office in August 2008. This restored the civilian dispensation in Pakistan, although the military continued to exert influence over the foreign and the security policies of the country.

Since the return of parliamentary democracy, Pakistan has witnessed the expansion of civilian space and increased efforts by the Parliament to restore governance structures. But the efforts towards consolidating democratic gains were hampered by chronic instability and political crises fuelled by an activist judiciary, an assertive media and a reactive military. These three unelected, non-representative institutions kept the civilian political leadership under tight scrutiny. Squabbling between the various political parties also led to indirect military intervention to restore stability in the system. This was evident from the ‘Kayani moment’, where the army chief stopped opposition leader Nawaz Sharif’s Long March as it was headed to Islamabad, asking for the restoration of the judiciary’s relevance and power. The judiciary, under the leadership of Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, went into overdrive. It nullified laws, intervened in the day-to-day affairs of the executive branch, threatened to quash a constitutional amendment passed by the parliament through a rare consensus, and disqualified a prime minister for following the constitution and refusing to write a letter indicting the sitting president of the republic.

The military, which faced severe criticism during 2007-2008, also began to reassert itself from 2009. Military high command and civilian leadership were at loggerheads on numerous occasions. Starting from the government’s attempt to exercise operational and financial control over the military’s intelligence service, Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI, this battle culminated in the ‘Memogate’ scandal. In 2009, the military pressured the government for not objecting to what the military called ‘intrusive’ terms of the ‘Kerry-Lugar bill’, which promised a United States annual aid of $1.5 billion to the civilian government. Next, in 2010, the military again undercut the government by expressing ‘concerns’ over the alleged corruption of the political leadership.

The following year, 2011, saw the military facing severe public and internal backlash for recurring crises including a deteriorating relationship with the US, including the Raymond Davis fiasco (where a contractor with the Central Intelligence Agency, who was attached to the Lahore Consulate, killed three men). Tensions with the US escalated with the US forces conducting a unilateral raid into Pakistani territory and killing Osama bin Laden; this was followed by a top USA military officer declaring the Haqqani network a ‘veritable arm of the ISI’, and close on its heels, the ‘Salala attack’. The civilian government, instead of capitalizing on these opportunities, defended the military and faced flak for it. In return, the military leadership collaborated with a ‘suspicious’ businessman, Mansoor Ejaz, and a hyperactive media, and accused the government of treason. A ‘memo’, ostensibly by Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, to Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, USA, was presented as evidence. The opposition led by Nawaz Sharif filed a writ in the supreme court for a judicial investigation into the case. Army Chief General Kayani, and ISI head Lt General Shuja Pasha, submitted statements against the civilian leadership for their involvement in the memo scandal that hit the national sovereignty and armed forces of the country.

These developments severely undermined the country’s fragile democracy once again, and talk of a Bangladeshi model, limited military intervention and a coup d’état re-entered the national conversation.

1.

Pakistan’s Ruling Coalition Must Not Splinter

There has been much ado about the fact that now the ruling coalition could split in response to the great betrayals perpetrated by Asif Ali Zardari. In classic machismo-laden bravado, the honorific narratives have been urging Nawaz Sharif and his party to take the bold step and stick to their ‘principled’ stand. What is interesting about these exhortations is the brazen rendering of political discourse in black-and-white terms.

Many a former ambassador, the recent cohort to jump into the fray of political activism, has found a great post-retirement vocation. Once the plush tenures are over and all that could be extracted from the holy state cow has been extracted, now is the time to speak the truth and condemn military dictatorships. Convenient and most opportune! This low-risk strategy is paying its dividends: a great whitewashing of all that they were a party to, and all that they let happen in front of their red-taped offices. The ex-servicemen whose record is even more dismal are more vociferous in their advocacy for a democratic Pakistan.

Therefore, the confused citizens with a shred of historical sense are simply bewildered. General Chishti, the key player in toppling Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government and the unleashing of eleven years of medieval darkness, is heard talking about resistance to army rule. Ironically, the realization took three decades of inflicting lasting damage and creating fissures within the body politic. Another retired Army Chief, General Beg, is also at the forefront. His vitriol, which cannot camouflage the years when he actively sabotaged the democratic process, admitted before the supreme court that he had ‘advised’ a bench not to restore Junejo’s government and disbursed astronomical sums of money raised through another shady character heading a dubious financial institution to undermine the civilian government of the time.

And let us not forget Air Marshal Asghar Khan, who urged General Zia to hang Bhutto at Kohala Bridge and that army intervention was legitimate in national interest. His well-meaning son, the bright Omar Asghar Khan (may his soul rest in peace), joined Musharraf and heralded the dawn of a new era with the last army takeover. Inconvenient: mea culpa?

Since Pakistan’s inception, the politicians, not the best for sure, were portrayed as the evil characters. The first decade of democracy 1947-58 witnessed seven prime ministers with an overarching establishment fiddling and rocking the boat each time. So politicos earned a bad name and were ousted in 1958 for nearly twelve years. We know well what happened during 1972-77 that eventually ended in the 1977 coup, led from the front by General Chishti, who depicted Bhutto as the worst thing to have happened to Pakistan. In the process, half the country was lost and its institutions sabotaged even before they could take root.

The most recent decade of democratic rule between 1988-99 was yet again marked by similar games of power, betrayal and military interference culminating in martial rule that is still refusing to go away. Among others, the key lesson of this decade was the willingness of the political elites to play the game, the rules for which were set by other power centres. They were hostage to their own limitations and the instruments of the state represented by opportunities for corruption as well as witch-hunting organizations that ostensibly oversaw accountability of the political elites.

Prior to the mobilization of the middle classes and the new components of an expanded bourgeoisie, something unique had taken place through the Charter of Democracy. This document was a Herculean achievement by the major political players, if we were to exclude the Tonga parties; a document that is still alive and from which no party has backed out.

This is momentous, a coalition, that too of former adversaries, will not be an easy process to manage. It will stumble, falter and swirl; and it should. Political maturity is neither gained through pompous declarations nor pious accords. It is the experience of governance and the ability for conflict-resolution and problem-solving that makes coalitions work. The Indian case is the closest to our context. In the last two decades, the Indian political class has learnt the art of managing coalitions and even now this is far from a smooth ride.

The current hysteria against the villainous nature of Zardari and his real and imagined misdeeds is nothing but a desperate call for the old order – of the 1950s, 1970s and 1990s – to return in full force. Like the polarized polity of Bangladesh, where the army had to intervene in January 2007 to ‘save’ the country from chaos.

The old order has beneficiaries: political underlings who can switch and become pegs in the power game; retired bureaucrats who can pledge loyalty for favours; journalists who can broker power and profit from it, and so on. This time it is difficult: whom to demolish as a ‘security-risk’ and whom to term as a born-again Jinnah? And, above all, a vigilante media and a highly-charged civil society led by lawyers cannot be appeased or tricked into these little games.

One can detect some measure of frustration, almost a panic, as to why Nawaz Sharif has not condemned Zardari and called him a ‘chor’. And why has Zardari not lashed out against the Sharifs for their inflexibility on the judges’ issue? It is a separate matter that the way a 100-day reign of this government has been judged is not even remotely akin to assessments of Musharraf’s eight years.

Yes, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz has signed off on the increase in the total number of judges to twenty-nine. Yes, it is reluctantly ready to accept judges that were appointed under Musharraf’s Provisional Constitutional Order. This is pragmatism of governance as opposed to the fiery materials for political rhetoric and high posturing. We simply cannot allow the ruling parties to part ways and demonstrate to a future authoritarian figure that politicians are incapable of governance because they ‘fight amongst each other’.

Political sagacity and vision require that lumberdar-behaviour, Mullahist puritanism and sloganeering must give way to a calibrated means of dispute resolution. In case the constitutional package is the only way out for the Pakistan People’s Party, then coalition partners and advocacy groups must focus on that. I have yet to read a single informed critique of the package that is inherently transformational and holds the potential to undo the misgovernance of the past. Instead, the voices that want the coalition to break away reject the package with the one-liner that it is meant to side-track the judges’ issue. Was this impasse and tribal behaviour worth eight years of democratic struggle, the death of Benazir Bhutto and sacrifices of people who died in the lawyers’ movement? The answer, plainly, is in the negative.

Mian Nawaz Sharif is a changed man. His steadfast commitment to the renewal of the truncated democratic process has been exemplary. Zardari has already tasted the bitter pills of politics, jail, media trials and miscarriage of justice. Who would know better than them that their split will only benefit their tormentors? And if they don’t know that, then God save us all.

The coalition must not splinter. In fact, the challenges require shared governance and collective experience for many years to come. Those advocating Sharif’s exit are serving no one’s cause. The coalition has to stay. Let us not revive the beleaguered forces that are currently on the retreat.

July 2008

2.

Suicide Democrats

I am appalled by the recent events that have yet again stirred instability and uncertainty into Pakistani politics. Those of us who voted in last year’s elections expected that the political leaders and Pakistan’s political elites would learn a lesson from our unfortunate history.

We also expected the lawyers’ movement, headed by men of extraordinary calibre, to display sagacity and vision and contribute to the consolidation of a democratic culture. However, what we witnessed was a complete rejection of the 18 February 2008 polls by the leading lights of the movement, and a few other naïve political actors. When the electorate voted in large numbers and returned the two mainstream political parties to the parliament, the lawyers, instead of accepting that they were wrong to boycott elections, insisted on their narrow and bourgeois interpretation of the term ‘rule of law’.

Sadly, law, rights and constitutionalism are personalized through the idolization of the deposed chief justice, as if Pakistan were still a medieval kingdom where the bad King (Musharraf) had to be overthrown, and the good Qazi (Justice Iftikhar) had to be ‘restored’ and vested with all moral, political, executive, military and judicial powers.

The right-wing media has further whipped this game up and brought the popular and well-meaning Sharif in direct confrontation with the federal government on this single issue. President Zardari, who we all hoped had learnt his lessons from endless court trials, jail and exile, would act with vision and leadership, disappointed all. Similarly, the supreme court led by Justice Dogar might have gone an extra mile to prove its neutrality. Alas, how wrong we were!

It is amazing that the long marches, threats of violence and agitation, and questionable imposition of the governor’s rule in the largest province of the country are taking place at a time when the Taliban are capturing one district after another. The media and civil society, instead of bringing down the creaky edifice of democracy, should be pressurizing political leaders to act with maturity and not wrangle among themselves.

Given the hysteria of the last few days, since the disqualification of the Sharif brothers, the media is portraying the situation as one with no solution. Enemies of democracy, the traditional forces that have always sabotaged civilian rule, are smiling at this imbroglio. There is no paucity of solutions: there are legal and constitutional means whereby the legislature can amend the constitution on the eligibility of politicians to contest elections and hold offices. A review petition can always be filed that could look at the questions of law pertaining to this matter. Similarly, the promulgation of another National Reconciliation Ordinance is not beyond the realms of possibility. Politics is about bargains and adjustments to strengthen the representative system, rather than bringing it down at every inconvenient juncture.

The Pakistan People’s Party must take the initiative to avoid further fissures in the tenuous federation called Pakistan. The current posturing and gung-ho behaviour of the Pakistan People’s Party’s Punjab leaders need to be arrested by the central leadership. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and, in particular, its Quaid, Mian Nawaz Sharif, should also rise above the rhetoric of the nineties and display flexibility that is essential to a functional democracy. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz has little support in the three smaller provinces of Pakistan and its current rhetoric and thundering against President Zardari, who represents the smaller federating units, is not a good omen. A group of political activists torched the memorial of Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi, and there have been strong reactions to this across the country, especially in Sindh. Why blame the bomb blasts at funerals and mosques when such is the prevalent culture of protest?

If the deposed chief justice has to be restored, the matter must be brought before the parliament and solved through constitutional means. One cannot play the politics of constitutionalism and find solutions through executive orders. If Mr Sharif will lead an agitation with the lawyers who are now placed on the other side of the democratic divide, he will not only engineer the fall of the central government and the Pakistan People’s Party, but will also sign the deed of death for the future of democratic politics in Pakistan.

Over fifty deposed judges have taken fresh oaths under the policy of the sitting government. When the incumbent judiciary is trampled and defamed, the detractors forget that it includes all those judges who resisted Musharraf’s Emergency. Once an individual is restored to the top slot, will it become legitimate overnight or will the incumbent judges be fired for being part of the ‘naqli’ judiciary?

The civic activism since 2007 is a harbinger of change in Pakistan. The lawyers’ movement is de-legitimizing democracy and political parties (including the largest and perhaps the only national party). One may ask whose purpose is being served here. Is it not similar to what the leaders of the Taliban and other extremist groups maintain about democracy by calling it ‘kufr’?

The establishment and its proxies must not win this game. At present, it looks like both the mainstream political parties and their obstinate leaders are bound to create a situation similar to 1958, 1977 and 1999. However, this time the cost of unrest and confrontation will be detrimental to our future. The vicious cycle, emanating from our inability to handle political squabbles, will this time give way to erosion of democratic space won today with sacrifices, toils and struggles.

March 2009

3.

To Undo the Vicious Past

That Pakistan’s endemic political instability is caused by its inherent power imbalances is well-known. The continued spells of authoritarian rule have also retarded the growth of political parties and other necessary institutions essential for democratic governance. We are a country trapped in our history and our self-fulfilling conspiracies and intrigues that are also rooted in the various phases of the colonial era. Our geo-political situation, celebrated by a rentier state, has not helped us either. From the fifties we have been in close partnership with global powers that are viewed as the ultimate saviours of a dysfunctional polity.

In 1971, we lost half the country. While the seeds of discord in East Pakistan had been sown by West Pakistan’s ruling elites, our vengeful neighbour took full advantage and supported the Bangladeshi liberation movement. By all accounts, this was a tragedy that could have been avoided had the national security-obsessed state, dominated by West Pakistani vested interests, seen the writing on the wall and fixed the issues of federalism that still haunt us.

The current mess in Pakistan is no different from the historic cycles of instability. It is true that the growth of a middle class, relatively independent judiciary and a media that is trying to unshackle itself are clear and positive trends. However, the way Pakistan is governed, with its resources distributed and its state priorities rolled out in the name of nationalism,