Daily Times editorial Aug 30, 2010

Altaf Hussain’s ‘clarification’

MQM chief Altaf Hussain has felt compelled by the storm of criticism on his statement regarding a military intervention in the country’s affairs to ‘clarify’ what he meant in a television interview. It is debatable however whether the ‘clarification’ has helped or only made confusion worse confounded. In the long, rambling interaction, Altaf Hussain said he never wanted martial law but a “martial law-like intervention” to change the country’s fate. Not content with appealing to “patriotic generals” (are there any of the other kind?), the MQM chief also dragged the Supreme court (SC) into his ‘revolutionary’ ramblings, referring to the power of the SC to order the army under Article 190 of the constitution to clean up the system. Altaf wants an ‘honest’ government of patriotic generals, retired judges, bureaucrats, intellectuals and journalists, i.e. what he calls a modified Bangladesh model. Regarding his fulminations against feudal landowners, some of whom have displayed their penchant for considering themselves above the law by carrying out illegal breaches of bunds to save their lands in the ongoing floods, the suspicion cannot be wished away that it is his anti-Sindhi bias that informs his seemingly ‘revolutionary’ diatribe against feudalism. Currently, what worries the MQM above all else is the influx of Sindhi displaced persons into Karachi and the other cities of Sindh, thereby threatening the ethnically-based hegemony of the MQM in Sindh’s urban areas.
Pakistan is no stranger to military or authoritarian dispensations. Whether the military has ruled directly (for more than half of our history) or indirectly (through imposed ‘technocratic’ regimes), each time the result has been an unmitigated disaster. Why then would anyone in their right mind now propose something that has brought so much grief to our people? There may, however, be method in this madness. The whiff of conspiracy is once again in the air. Altaf’s proposed ‘coalition’ of the army, judiciary, sections of the media and others fits neatly into the current divide in the country’s polity. Altaf holds that those who rely on a continuation of the political process and repeated elections in order to weed out the bad and usher in the better in the system are bound to be disappointed. His impatience with that protracted process thus expresses itself in one more version of a military-led anti-democratic ‘coup’.
However, all is not dark on the horizon. It is heartening to note that most of the political forces across the spectrum and enlightened opinion have been harshly critical of the MQM chief’s plan. Whereas there is truth in Altaf’s assertion that most of the political leaders in our history have been the products of martial law (conveniently deleting his own and the MQM’s name from that list), the sea change discernible in our political culture is that whereas the overwhelming majority of those with some such taint in their past have moved on the basis of experience towards a recognition of the necessity of a continuing political process through democratic means, Altaf Hussain has gone into reverse gear in touting a return to autocracy.
There has been much air time and column space devoted in recent days to the contrast between the efficient response of the military and the laggardly functioning of the civilian governments to the flood emergency. What is forgotten in this misguided glorification of the men in uniform is that they have, as in the past, risen to the challenge in support of the civil administration and, given their capacity, delivered in fine fashion. That is to be expected of a disciplined and organised force doing its duty. The scale of the disaster would have put any government against the wall. On balance, despite flaws and gaps, the flood relief effort seems to have geared up, albeit in a delayed fashion. The real challenges of course lie ahead. The last thing required right now is the cat among the pigeons Altaf has unleashed to cast doubts about the democratic dispensation’s future.