Prospects amidst uncertainty
Rashed Rahman
As the noose around the Sharifs tightens, the brothers have
had an over three hours meeting at Nawaz Sharif’s Jati Umra residence to
discuss the PML-N’s leadership crisis, strategy for the upcoming Senate polls and
the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) cases against them. Topping the agenda
according to reports was the issue of appointing a new party head after the
Supreme Court (SC) struck down the provisions of the Elections (Amendment) Act
2017 relating to a disqualified person heading a party. In principle, the
decision is to appoint Shahbaz Sharif as an acting president of PML-N until he
can be formally elected by the General Council of the party after the Senate
elections next month.
While cogitating these issues, the PML-N is also keeping a
watchful eye on the general elections in July-August this year. Some observers
are wondering if something similar to what happened to the PML-N Senate
candidates in being declared independents by the Election Commission of
Pakistan (ECP) after Nawaz Sharif was barred by the SC from being party chief
may not be in store vis-à-vis the general elections too. For some, the comeback
of Nawaz Sharif after his double disqualification (from the premiership and
party head) through huge enthusiastic public rallies invoke memories of
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s similar comeback after the military coup of 1977 that
overthrew his government. That event ended in tragedy. Perhaps the
powers-that-be have calculated there is no need to go so far this time.
Instead, after his disqualification as premier, Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif have
been enmeshed in case after case by NAB, a time honoured tactic in our
political history to harass political opponents and keep them twirling between
courtroom appearances.
One could also speculate whether the arrest of Ahad Cheema
(which has provoked a protest by the Pakistan Administrative Services) was of a
piece with the attempt (stopped halfway) in recent years to knock out Asif
Zardari’s ‘props’ in the shape of cronies and front men. After all, the
powers-that-be have surely not gone to all the trouble of disqualifying Nawaz
Sharif twice and keeping him and his family hopping between NAB cases only to
let the PML-N win the Senate and general elections.
The ‘reduction’ of the Senate PML-N candidates to
independents has opened the door to horse trading, according to some analysts. Buying
Senate votes would be aimed at preventing PML-N garnering a plurality if not a
majority in the upper house. If fair and free general elections are held in July-August,
on present trends the PML-N is likely to win on the basis of its undiminished support
in Punjab. Would the PML-N be allowed to be in power with control or at least
influence in both houses of parliament for a new five-year term? That would
seem to contradict the whole effort since the Panama case.
Veteran lawyer S M Zafar says the masses want an end to
confrontation amongst state institutions. He believes the crisis can be
resolved by taking the path of truth. He considers the SC verdict against Nawaz
Sharif to be based on a weak argument that contradicts the people’s
constitutional right to universal franchise, freedom of association and the
right to form and choose leaders for political parties. The implication being
that Articles 62 and 63, inserted in the Constitution by evil military dictator
General Ziaul Haq for malign purposes, do not provide a solid foundation for
the SC’s findings. Others have urged people to avoid taking political questions
to the (currently willing to entertain) courts to avoid the double jeopardy of
judicialising politics (already underway) and the politicisation of the
judiciary (a trend embryonically beginning). Some like the Awami National
Party’s (ANP's) Ehsan Wyne have once again reminded us that half the country
was lost in 1971 because of a failure to respect the electorate’s mandate.
In Pakistan’s 70-year history, the tussle between unelected
but powerful state institutions over representative ones has been a permanent affliction.
Apart from brief, unusual periods, the former have dominated. Today, the
scenario resembles nothing more than the triumph of the unelected state institutions
over the representative ones.
Historically, the struggle for real democracy that emanated
from the west with the advent of capitalism went through many twists and turns
and even bloodshed before parliament’s supremacy was firmly established. The
franchise too expanded gradually to overcome wealth, education and other
restrictions alongside extending the vote to all sections of the people, women
being the last beneficiaries, before universal franchise was accepted as the
norm.
Countries like Pakistan could and should benefit from the
costs and sacrifices of those who came before and finally produced the triumph
of democracy. That history provides the foundations of a genuine democratic
system. But if our political ‘model’ then tries to limit parliament’s supremacy
or emasculate representative institutions through spurious juxtapositions such
as that the Constitution (a creature that parliament is empowered to amend)
stands above parliament, it lends the basic law of the land a mystical ‘permanent’
character that is belied by the power of parliament to rewrite it.
In the country that is considered to have given the world
the ‘mother of all parliaments’, Britain, there is no written constitution.
Everything is judged on the basis of evolved conventions and precedent. There,
theoretically, parliament has the power to declare a man a woman and vice
versa, even in the face of the facts. Of course we can only dream of such power
to our parliament in what is emerging as a hybrid democratic system.
The continuing tussle between unelected and representative
institutions that has remained the hallmark of our history seems set to be
prolonged, exacerbating the present atmosphere of uncertainty that may itself
explode in our faces if not handled wisely. There is too much precedent for
this eventuality in our history for us to be sanguine about the instability
that threatens.
The struggle for a genuine democracy that has consumed so
much time, effort and blood in our history represents still the terrain on
which future battles are likely to be fought. Liberal, democratic and
progressive forces cannot but engage in this struggle for their own survival in
the face of regressive unelected state institutions’ policies and non-state
actors. More likely than not, this struggle will pave the path to progressive
political, economic and social change too. Without it, our state and society
are doomed to sink into anarchy, chaos and barbarism.
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