Daily Times Editorial Jan 17, 2013

Crisis and response The political crisis triggered by Maulana Tahirul Qadri’s long march, continuing rally in Islamabad and set of demands, and the suspiciously coincidental order of the Supreme Court ordering the arrest of Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf and others in the RPPs case has revealed the divide in the polity and society. On the one hand stand Qadri and his supporters within the political parties, chief amongst them MQM and PTI. On the other side can be counted almost all the parties represented in parliament, government and opposition, civil society, the lawyers community, and concerned citizens. The former camp has come out through Qadri’s rantings and Imran Khan’s so-called charter of seven demands with ideas that stripped of their verbiage, amount in essence to a return to the affliction of anti-democratic forces putting the cart before the horse, or more accurately, red herrings to sabotage the historic elections due soon. The other camp is agreed on the historic nature of this conjuncture, when Pakistan is poised for the first time in its history to witness a consensual convergence of almost all shades of political opinion on the way forward: fair and free transparent elections through a consensus-based Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) under a consensual caretaker setup whose neutrality will be beyond doubt because it will enjoy the confidence of both government and opposition. It is strange then that the anti-democratic camp is still railing on about rejecting just these consensual rules of the game framed after a great deal of thought and discussion in parliament, and enshrined in the 18th Amendment. The qualified criticisms being levelled at the CEC of being too old to ‘resist’ the machinations of the parties in government and the opposition make no sense when these governments will cease to be in power once the Assemblies are dissolved and the caretaker setup takes over. If the caretaker setup to come is being criticised as some kind of underhand deal (muk-muka) amongst the parties in parliament, surely this is an illogical stance given that inherently the government and opposition are rivals in the elections and have framed these rules of the game to avoid the usual accusations of election rigging that have bedevilled every such exercise in the past. On the touchstone of the constitution, best democratic practice and intent, therefore, the critics are making no sense. The people of Pakistan may or may not be happy with the performance of the incumbent governments during the last five years, but only uninformed and foolhardy elements without an iota of understanding of our past want to throw the baby of democracy out with the bathwater of these governments. The ‘crisis’ engendered by these sinister simultaneous moves aside, the demands of Qadri have exposed his hand. He wants, as in the past, the military and judiciary to settle the fate of the country. Powerful as these institutions are, this is neither their remit nor in accordance with any constitutional or democratic principle. The days of imposed governments manipulated into power by hook or by crook by the establishment may or may not be over (the jury is still out), but the situation and the conspiratorial moves to deny the people the right to bring in another elected government for the first time in the country’s history through fair elections cannot and should not be denied them, especially when the moment is tantalisingly close (this very closeness may well explain the frantic efforts to sabotage the electoral exercise). It is the interests of all political parties, arguably even those supporting Qadri for whatever misconceived reasons, that the electoral exercise is allowed to proceed on time and without putting obstacles in its path. Authoritarian, military, imposed governments are littered through Pakistan’s passage through time, but each one has left a bigger mess in its wake than when it started. The lesson is inescapable: our discontents with democracy and its failings notwithstanding, there is no way forward in the foreseeable firmament other than letting the democratic political process play itself out in what promises to be an increasingly credible manner since it enjoys across the board consensus, and using the space and freedoms only democracy allows to tackle the very serious problems confronting the country and our society.