President General Pervez Musharraf has said on countless occasions: “I will never impose an Emergency or martial law in the country”. Why, then, is he thinking of taking an about-turn?
A state of Emergency enables the national assembly to extend its life term by up to a year. It allows the federal executive to suspend many fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution. It also enables federal directives to override certain provincial prerogatives. Are there radically new internal and external conditions that warrant such a drastic step to “protect” the federation?
The national assembly has been in session for a few days. Interestingly, treasury members of the pro-US Musharraf regime have joined hands with the religious oppositionists sympathetic to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to condemn the United States for threatening to bomb Al-Qaeda and Taliban “safe havens” in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The assembly has erupted with thundering calls to defend Pakistan’s “sovereignty” and “territorial integrity”, despite assurances from the American administration that no hot pursuit, let alone any invasion, is on the cards.
Simultaneously, the idea of a joint Afghan jirga mooted last year by President Bush and Hamid Karzai with President Musharraf has been scuttled. The “tribal elders” from Pakistan representing Waziristan have refused to go to Kabul. They say they fear reprisals from their Taliban compatriots, a thought that didn’t occur to them earlier when they were readying for the jirga. Finally, President Musharraf has pulled out of the Kabul moot at the last minute himself and sent Mr Shaukat Aziz, the prime minister, to hobnob with Mr Karzai, stamping failure on the joint jirga even before it has been convened.
The giveaway has been provided by Major (retired) Tanvir Shah, a parliamentary secretary with “connections”. Incredibly, he stood up in parliament the other day to denounce the American CIA for killing Chinese nationals in Pakistan. All that remains for the “external threat” to materialize is for the ubiquitous “Indian hand” to show up now. This is the traditional handiwork of Pakistan’s manipulative intelligence agencies.
The “internal” threat is more implicit than explicit. Clearly, President Musharraf has been in a spin since the Chief Justice of Pakistan was unanimously restored to power and lost little time in asserting the court’s independence. If the SC could reverse an earlier decision and free the PMLN’s Javed Hashmi, there is nothing to stop it from reversing another earlier decision and granting the Sharif brothers their fundamental right to return to Pakistan. Their fundamental rights petition has been strengthened by the addition of a new point: the Sharifs are required in the “public interest” to lead their party in the forthcoming general elections. But the return of the Sharifs would create a plethora of problems for the Musharraf regime and pit it into another confrontation with the courts, thereby undermining its credibility and electoral prospects further. By contrast, a suspension of fundamental rights under an Emergency would presumably deprive the courts of rubbing up the government the wrong way on this and many such issues in the offing.
Finally, the ruling League would like nothing better then to have its life extended for another year and general elections delayed accordingly. It is in great disquiet and disarray. Its electoral prospects are dimming by the day. It is mortally scared of a deal between General Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto in which their main benefactor is stripped of his uniform (whence he drives his power of beneficence) and compelled to play footsy with their arch enemy.
So if the signs ominously favour an Emergency, what could derail General Musharraf’s plans?
First, the SC might not be a pushover. It could clutch at its power of “judicial review” and strike the Emergency down. All hell would then break loose, leading to constitutional gridlock. Second, if civil society, lawyers and opposition political parties jump into the fray behind the judges, as they most certainly will, the constitutional breakdown would lead to violent agitation. In the event, the government could back down and lose its remaining credibility, or it could go a step further, impose martial law and send the judiciary and parliament packing. But this won’t work either. In the heated aftermath of repression, there are not likely to be too many new or old judges ready to take a new oath to legitimize martial law. Indeed, the probability is that most senior judges in the country would resign in a show of solidarity with their peers and the country would be adrift without any law or order. Thus General Musharraf’s problems would increase manifold, his remaining legitimacy would evaporate, terrorism would increase, uncertainty would damage the economy and he would end up riding a tiger, which would surely gobble him up sooner than later like his three predecessors who took such a route.
General Musharraf was once advised that if he wanted to impose an Emergency he should not constantly deny it, and if he didn’t want to impose it he should hold out an oblique threat constantly. We don’t know what he made of that advice. But, for what it’s worth, here’s our advice: “Don’t do it, General Musharraf. The economy will be the first casualty and you will be the next”.