The Friday Times: Najam Sethi’s Editorial
Parliament’s five-year term ends in March 2013 and general elections must be held within three months of its dissolution. But most people fear they will be postponed for one reason or another. A couple of conspiracy theories have cropped up to heighten everyone’s state of anxiety.
One theory says that President Asif Zardari is in no mood to go home next September when his five-year term ends because he desperately needs to clutch at his presidential immunity from prosecution in the various corruption cases against him that were revived after the notorious NRO was shot down by the Supreme Court. So he will conjure up some reason to impose a state of emergency and postpone the elections. The constitution has not shut the door on such an option. This is the route followed by General Pervez Musharraf when he got the parliament elected in the 2002 elections to grant him a second term as president before going home in 2007.
But this theory founders on the rock of an aggressive and independent Supreme Court. The SC has been trying to corner Mr Zardari on one count or another. It compelled him to revive the Swiss corruption cases against himself and is now leaning to the view that the Presidency cannot be a politically partisan office, which means Mr Zardari cannot be both President and Co-Chair of the PPP. So we may logically expect it to strike down any such move by the President. The military, which is fed up with Mr Zardari for a host of reasons, is also likely to gang up with the opposition if he dares to take this path.
The other theory is more sinister. It is based on the argument that the next elections will likely produce a clutch of coalition governments at the centre and in Islamabad, which will be disastrous for Pakistan because past experience shows such governments to be both corrupt and incompetent. In order to avoid this quagmire, the theory suggests the need for a postponement of the elections and an installation of an interim government of bipartisan technocrats without Mr Zardari and the PPP. This government would then be enabled to take the tough decisions necessary to pull Pakistan out of its myriad economic and political troubles. How this is to be accomplished is left vague and unclear. But an interventionist role is indirectly laid out for both the SC and the military. The idea is to somehow knock out Mr Zardari and seize control of the interim government set up for holding elections next year and extend its life by virtue of support from the two powerful organs of the state. This theory is doubly attractive because it provides a platform for the extension in service of both the army chief and the chief justice who are scheduled to retire in November and December respectively next year. In the new blueprint envisaged for Pakistan, both gentlemen are deemed indispensable. And both have been flogging populist agendas for some time now. The army chief won’t fight the Taliban without a national consensus and has enveloped himself in the cloak of anti-Americanism while the chief justice is struggling to end corruption and crime, reduce inflation and have the Balochistan government sacked. Under the circumstances, everyone expects “something to happen” sooner than later.
The federal information minister, Qamar Zaman Kaira, has not helped to clear the fog by saying that the next elections will be held in May, exactly two months after parliament completes its five year term to the day in March. Temperatures in May can climb to 115 F in the shade, which is hardly conducive for polling. Also, power shortages will begin to weigh down people in the summer and hurt the cause of the PPP government. On top of it all, the government has to pay back a couple of billion dollars to the IMF in late January, which will erode forex reserves, bring the rupee under devaluation pressure, increase the prices of imported goods and fuel inflation. This is a recipe best left for cooking to an interim caretaker government that doesn’t have to worry about a public backlash.
If the conspiracy theories are to be disregarded, then the best option is for parliament to be dissolved by mid-January, before the IMF, power shortages and budgetary constraints begin to hurt the government, and elections to be held in March. But this leaves barely two months in which to put together a caretaker government to oversee the elections. The appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) by mutual consent as required by the amended constitution took over six months. An agreement on the interim prime minister, four chief ministers and governors, and their cabinet of ministers could take longer. If there is a deadlock – by design or happenstance – the CEC backed by the SC is constitutionally empowered to take this decision.
And that is precisely the entry point for the second conspiracy theory.