Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan is a master orator. “There is a conspiracy to crush us under a presidential system”, he thundered in the National Assembly the other day, referring to the continuing lack of quorum in the House. This, he feared, might be exploited by General Pervez Musharraf to bad-mouth parliament and send it packing. Histrionics aside, are we really headed for a “presidential” system?
A presidential system can take many forms. In the US, for example, the president and parliament are directly elected and there is no prime minister. In France, they are both directly elected but there is also an indirectly ‘elected’ (president’s nominee) prime minister. In Egypt, until recently a directly elected but circumcised parliament had approved Hosni Mobarak as president for five five-year terms – there is no prime minister – followed by rigged referendums to obtain the peoples’ approval. Last week, Mr Mobarak went through a rigged presidential election to demonstrate (in vain) greater “democracy” and legitimacy. In Pakistan, different presidential forms have been tried. General Ayub Khan owed his presidency to an indirectly elected parliament without a prime minister. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was first an unelected president and chief martial law administrator and then an elected prime minister with an elected but cowering parliament. General Zia ul Haq was an unelected president for eight years with a nominated parliament and then contrived an unrepresentative, non-party “elected” parliament which duly “elected” his nominee as prime minister (he sacked him barely three years later). And our own General Musharraf was an unelected president without any parliament for three years before contriving a rigged but elected parliament and sacking his first prime minister last year.
But, despite their varying forms, these presidential systems are similar in their core content. In each it is the President who calls the shots and not the prime minister or parliament (even though parliament may theoretically have the ‘legal’ power to effectively challenge the president, it is a power which it is rarely exercises in practice). And by that criterion, despite the paraphernalia of the prime ministerial system, President General Musharraf is already running a strong and centralized presidential system. He has rigged the political system and ensured a suitably pliant parliament that has meekly accepted his nominee as prime minister. He lords it over both via the National Security Council.
And when he is in a hurry to get cracking he thinks nothing of personally presiding over the yes-sir prime minister’s yes-sir cabinet. But his omnipotent power is derived from his position as army chief and not from any legitimacy freely bestowed upon him by the people, parliament or constitution. That is why he refuses to shed his uniform even as he continuously manipulates the system to ensure his longevity.
It is, of course, conceivable that President General Musharraf may have delusions of popularity and covet greater legitimacy as president than he enjoys at the moment. In the event, he might wish to acquire this not through another discredited referendum or unholy constitutional ‘deal’ with the mullahs as in the past but through an election in the future. This would impact on the legitimacy or acceptability of his exercise of power rather than on the quantum of it at his disposal. In order to achieve that end, he would be obliged to relinquish the power that flows from the barrel of a gun and replace it with the power that flows from the sovereignty of the people. How can that be done?
He could sack the current system, unilaterally amend the constitution, compel the judiciary to provide him cover and go for a direct presidential election. In this he could count on the support of the local councilors that he has recently midwifed and the Pakistan Muslim League that he has usurped. But if the mullahs, mainstream parties and sub-nationalists boycott these elections, he will not get the consensual legitimacy he seeks and his mission would be aborted.
Or he could use the same political resources to try and win a two-thirds majority for his party in the next general elections so that he can be indirectly elected as president by the members of the national and provincial parliaments as envisaged by the current constitution or directly elected by the people through an amended constitution. But if the two/thirds majority or direct presidential victory is obtained by pre-election rigging – including banning popular opposition leaders from contesting and fracturing mainstream parties – then his personal legitimacy would be cast in doubt by the very lack of legitimacy of the parliament or the election that gives it to him. In the event, nothing would have been gained by the whole controversial exercise.
General Musharraf may be one sort of president or another in any devised system but his power will ultimately flow from his uniform. If he clings to it, he can never acquire legitimacy. If he sheds it, no system will be able to protect him for long. It is as simple as that. Therefore the debate over whether or not a presidential system suits him is irrelevant and futile.