Next week President Asif Zardari will move the 18th amendment bill to the constitution. If passed by end March, it will have far reaching consequences for state and society in Pakistan. The President will shed his powers to sack prime ministers and governments, to appoint the service chiefs and provincial governors, and to enforce the ban on Nawaz Sharif becoming prime minister again. More significantly, the “concurrent” list of subjects in the domain of the federal and provincial government will be abolished and 46 new areas will be given in the care of provincial governments – an unprecedented leap in the direction of greater provincial autonomy. Equally, parliamentary oversight and approval in the appointment of judges to the superior courts via a six member judicial-executive commission and a bipartisan eight member parliamentary commission will largely negate the impact of undue judicial intervention by unaccountable judges in the affairs of the executive that characterizes the current scene.
But such developments could redound on state and society if three pressing issues are not simultaneously addressed in a satisfactory manner. The first is civil-military relations. When power was distributed in a troika of army chief, president and prime minister – as from 1988-1997 – the presidency could theoretically play the role of a broker, balancer or valve of sorts. Unfortunately, in practice, the troika always ended up tilting against the prime minister – the army chief and president ganged up to sack two Benazir Bhutto governments and two Nawaz Sharif regimes in the 1990s. Equally, though, when the prime minister was all powerful – as in 1977 and 1999 when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Mr Sharif were respectively ruling the country – the army chief carried out a coup to resolve a political crisis. So henceforth all prime ministers and army chiefs will have to learn how to get along constitutionally without endangering national security or democracy. This requires the prime minister to govern wisely and democratically and the army chief to restrain personal ambition or institutional arrogance, no mean tasks.
The second is federal-provincial relations. The extension of the provincial writ will lead to devolution of economic power and consolidation of regional cultures and politics. If this strengthens the federation – as in the USA and India where unity in diversity is enshrined in the mental makeup of the nationalist state and society – it will be good for both national security and democracy. But if it leads to financial anarchy and corruption in the provinces or undermines the federation by stoking violent ethnicity in Sindh, sectarianism in Punjab, Islamic extremism in the NWFP or separatism in Balochistan, then civil-military relations will plunge and the powerful national security paradigm will overwhelm the democratic urge, with disastrous consequences.
The third is the state of political economy. Bad politics will always end up undermining the best economic prospects – as from 1988-1999 when reckless politics under elected prime ministers led to sporadic economic growth of less than 3 per cent yearly and blundering politics under quasi-military rule from 2006-2008 knocked the annual growth rate from 7 per cent to 2 per cent. Unfortunately, the last two years under a democratically elected civilian government have not inspired much optimism, despite a favourable international environment for receipt of grants, soft loans, debt write-offs and swaps. The Zardari regime, true to form, is leaking like a sieve and stumbling from pillar to post. Two finance ministers have come and gone, and the finance ministry was hankering for a clean and firm hand which hopefully it has got with the appointment of Dr Hafeez Sheikh. The intervention of an ill-equipped and populist judiciary in economic and financial matters – as in stopping the privatization of the huge loss-making Steel Mill and attempting to fix the price of sugar in a free market – has made matters worse. Lack of a national consensus on how to deal with the Taliban unequivocally and negotiate a strategic partnership with America has also adversely impacted the economy. On the one hand, it has frightened away potential foreign investors and led to capital flight from the country, and on the other alienated the American Congress that has legislated US$1.5 billion in annual grants to Pakistan when the American economy has slipped into its worst recession since World War II.
In short, Pakistan desperately needs a visionary political and military leadership to rebuild its state and society in tandem. The military must abandon its India-centric obsession that stops Pakistan from becoming the transit hub linking trade, oil, gas and electricity between South and West-Central Asia; indeed the military has to trim its sails to suit a different national security paradigm that emphasizes economic autarky and well being rather than military preparedness alone. The politicians must propose and execute good governance and continuity. And the media and judiciary should facilitate rather than derail such a process. If this is a tall order, the alternative is war with our neighbours, civil and sectarian strife at home, and economic meltdown leading to financial default. That is a terrifying prospect. If this turns out to be a long hot summer of cruel food crises, galloping inflation, unending power outages, rising unemployment, popular angst and continuing political bickering that leads to the ouster of another civilian set-up, we should not expect miracles to resuscitate Pakistan again.