The PPP and PMLN take orders from abroad,” accuses General Pervez Musharraf, implying that both parties are working against the “national interest” and should be spurned. Who forced the two leaders into exile in the first place? Who refuses to let them return to their homeland? Who blackmailed their party men into desertion and facilitated their floor crossing in parliament? “Leave the uniform issue to me,” insists General Musharraf, “I will decide when the time comes.” Why should the issue be left to him? Who made a public pledge that he would shed it before the year was out? Who said that one of the intents and purposes of the 17th amendment was that it would facilitate the transition to a civilian president? “The MMA has gone back on its agreement with me on the NSC,” argues General Musharraf, “I am within my rights to change my mind on the uniform issue too.” Who brought the MMA into power? Who argued that it was better to have them p*****g inside the tent than outside? “The NSC is a consultative body,” assures General Musharraf, “it will work under parliament.” Who is chairman of the NSC? Who has the discretionary power to sack everyone who sits in it? Who has the power to sack parliament? “I want to bring the army in so that it can be kept out,” reasons General Musharraf. But the army is already in trade, industry, banking, property, telecommunications, agriculture; it is in the police, in the universities, in the ‘civil’ bureaucracy, in public corporations, in real estate, in short it is everywhere. All this happened when it was presumably “kept out”. What will happen when it is “brought in”?
General Musharraf isn’t the only one who has a lot of questions to answer. The prime minister, Zafarullah Jamali, cannot dodge a few of his own too. Why does an elected PM allow an unelected president in an army uniform to preside over cabinet meetings? Why does Mr Jamali argue that “arbitration and plea-bargaining to persons charged with corruption is itself a kind of institutional corruption” when his own cabinet coalition contains persons with NAB cases against them, when his own parliamentary majority was cobbled on the basis of persons who had defaulted on bank loans?
Chaudhry Shujaat, the president of the PMLQ, recently delivered a nugget: “The PPP should not be represented in the NSC because it is an anti-national security risk.” Which party received the largest number of votes in the last national election despite rigging, blackmail and bullying by the government? Which party would have naturally been in line to post the leader of the opposition in the national assembly if dozens of its members had not been illegally bribed or cajoled to croaa over to the treasury benches? If the combined opposition should nominate the leader of the PPP in the house as the leader of the opposition, how can Chaudhry Shujaat keep the PPP out of the NSC?
Mr Shahbaz Sharif should answer some questions too. “I’m dying to return home and serve my country,” he has declared time and again. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he has shouted from the rooftop. Now the Supreme Court has told him he’s free to return but he’s still dragging his feet. Why, if he wasn’t sure of his position, did he go to the Supreme Court in the first place? Why is he now saying that he will not return unless Nawaz Sharif permits him to do so?
Not to be left behind are Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari. Why are they refusing to go to Switzerland to contest the charges against them? Why, if they are not guilty as charged, are they refusing to confirm that the millions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts do not belong to them and can be repatriated to Pakistan?
Pakistan’s institutions also need to do some explaining. Why is the Supreme Court still sitting on the ISI case of bribery and electoral rigging in 1990 lodged by Mr Asghar Khan many years ago? Former DGs of intelligence agencies have a lot to answer for too: for example, the 1991 botch up that led to the assassination of President Najibullah and allowed a political vacuum to be created that sustained the factional warfare between northern and southern warlords for control of Kabul; the hasty recognition of the Taliban government in 1997 and the unqualified support to it thereafter to the exclusion of the Northern Alliance; the creation of jihadis as an instrument of state policy against India in Kashmir, regardless of the blowback via sectarianism and terrorism on domestic stability; and most recently the creation of the MMA to fill the vacuum left by the ouster of the two mainstream parties.
Every major politician and institutional leader is to blame for the mess Pakistan is in. That is why we have long advocated a process of truth and reconciliation between politicians, generals, bureaucrats and businessmen in the larger national interest. But far from heeding this, our polity seems to be headed in the opposite direction. How can any nation be built and sustained on lies, hypocrisy and opportunism? General Musharraf should review his political strategy. Much depends on his wisdom and less on his sincerity.