Perhaps frustrated that our young — some might say infantile — democracy lacked the maturity to tackle the issue of political corruption, the President has dispensed with it and launched his own accountability process. Tribunals under the judiciary are to be set up with the brief to quickly try cases of corruption relating to our elected representatives, both provincial and federal. After this short sharp shock, the President promises to set democracy back on its feet again. Some might describe this as a surgical operation on a sick body politic, an operation which need leave no scars nor have any long term side effects. They would be wrong to do so. Democracy will be so weakened by the exercise that it may need leading by the hand for years to come.
The first mistake of those who believe this to be a scarless operation is to ignore the unhealthy precedent the President has set by so readily sweeping aside an elected government. Despite invitations from a very few politicians for him to do so, their was no clamour from the people, no demonstrations, no riots, no sign that they had recanted of their votes. Sindh, of course was an exception, but it has always been so. The country was generally at peace with itself, and with its government.In dissolving the assemblies against such a background, the President has given the name of democracy a hollow sound.
Their second mistake is to disregard the damage that will be done to the judiciary by dragging it once more into politics. It is now to sit in judgement on the MNAs and MPAs presented to it by the President’s government. As the judiciary becomes more and more entangled in political issues, it becomes less and less able to stand as an institution independent of government, a prerequisite of stable democracy.
Their third mistake is to assume that the cancer of political corruption can be treated in an apolitical manner. This is not so. Corruption is essentially a political issue, and can only be dealt with on the political plane. Actions that the President and his caretaker government take now on this issue will have political repercussions for years to come. The President knows this, those who plead ignorance are either dangerously naive or simply deceitful.
The political nature of the President’s accountability operation becomes more obvious with each passing day. The latest report that ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was offered indemnity from prosecution in return for her departure from the country only confirms a trend that is worryingly evident: concentration on the sins of the PPP to the exclusion of the corruptions of the opposition. It is looking increasingly as if the President is using this hiatus in the democratic process to indulge in some political engineering.
It is too late to council caution in halting the democratic process, too late to argue that democracy must be allowed to find its own balance. It is even too late to urge against the introduction of a divisive accountability process or to argue that it should be left to the people to judge the conduct of their politicians. However, there is still time to request that the President and his caretaker government refrain from persecuting the PPP. We are still struggling with the divisions caused by previous attempts at guiding — or circumscribing — the electorate’s choice. Let us not repeat this mistake.
As the process of accountability is to go ahead, let it be governed by one over-riding principle: that the elections set for October 24 shall be free and fair. The pursuance of this principle demands that the forth-coming trials be over within 50 days so that no candidate must go to the hustings under the cloud of suspicion. Further, it requires that no political party be so damaged by the President’s process of accountability that it can no longer effectively get its message across to the people. So long as our political parties emerge from the trials to come with their ability to engage the electorate unimpaired, then we can be confident that the damage that the President has inflicted on the democratic process is not irreparable.