Daily Times Editorial Dec 21, 2009

PPP CEC’s fighting stance

The ruling PPP’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) has come out with a fighting stance, but in moderate terms and language that does the party credit in a situation where it could easily have been provoked into retaliating in like manner to some of the accusations and demands thrown at it since the Supreme Court’s verdict on the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO). The CEC announced its decisions in interaction with the media at the end of the daylong CEC meeting in Islamabad. The main points of the CEC’s deliberations and decisions include a resolution of solidarity and complete confidence in President Asif Ali Zardari, who is also the co-chairperson of the party; facing the cases against the party’s leaders in the courts and defending these leaders to the fullest extent in what are described by the CEC as politically motivated cases of victimisation; no resignations by ministers under pressure of blackmail from any quarter; and using “democracy and constitutionalism” as the weapons of choice to face their adversaries and foil all conspiracies against the mandate of the PPP to rule for its full term.
The PPP’s secretary general Jahangir Badar and information secretary Fauzia Wahab said the PPP believes in the rule of law, supremacy of the constitution, respects the institutions of state and hopes that all institutions will remain within their ambit. Badar stated that the PPP could have given a befitting response to its opponents and detractors but it refrained because it wanted to maintain the policy of reconciliation. He said the party had faced accountability in the past (the only party to be so victimised, he asserted) and was not afraid to face it in the future. He went on to stress that democracy was the only system that could be successful in Pakistan in the prevailing geo-political environment. Solidarity could only be strengthened and progress ensured through democracy, he reiterated.
Badar pointed to the scandal of billions of rupees worth of written off loans that have not been brought into the net of accountability. This loot and plunder must be reversed and such written off loans repaid, was his demand. He said the wealth looted in the name of privatisation during the previous regime should also be recovered. In answer to a question, Badar reminded his audience that the late Benazir Bhutto had rejected the NRO and asked for all the false cases against the PPP leaders to be wound up. He said the NRO was the brainchild of Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Shaukat Aziz and the party or its government neither promulgated it nor defended it in court.
The reference to using “democracy and constitutionalism” to wage a political struggle against its opponents and detractors places the PPP in the category of extraordinary restraint. It has not retaliated in the language or tone of its critics. So much so, when the angry Khursheed Shah openly advocated using the Sindh card to defend the PPP, others, including the president, rejected the notion and stressed the politics of the federation and democracy as the consistently preferred path of the PPP throughout its history. The president went so far as to say that he did not want to become another Sheikh Mujeebur Rehman (implying secessionism), although to be historically fair, Sheikh Mujeebur Rehman was no secessionist but a victim of a military dictatorship that refused to transfer power to an Awami League led by him and which had won the 1970 elections fair and square. Nevertheless, the thrust of the president’s remarks were in line with the role he played just after Benazir’s assassination, when he helped put out the fire of violent protest in Sindh with his slogan of “Pakistan Khappay”.
One need not hold any brief for the besieged president or the PPP-led government under attack by its opponents to see that the country cannot afford any destabilisation at this critical juncture. Within the ambit of the constitution and law, there is no threat to either the presidency or the government should they choose to continue in office. And one hopes that thought does not trigger any extra-constitutional ideas in any quarter.