Two major issues confront us this year: the election of the President and the fate of the 8th amendment. Symbiotically related since 1985, these issues have led to two controversial sackings of elected governments. Thus a larger question is at stake: is such a symbiosis compatible with the spirit of democracy?
Mr Ghulam Ishaq Khan has said that he will resist attempts to repeal the 8th amendment. The symbiosis between the Presidency and the 8th amendment means that Mr Khan expects to defend his incumbency next December. On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with that. Didn’t the combined opposition actually provoke President Ishaq to oust Benazir Bhutto’s government in 1990? Didn’t the Supreme Court validate the President’s action? Didn’t Ms Bhutto try to pay Mr Sharif back in the same coin last November? If so, the new consensus between government and opposition against Mr Khan and the 8th amendment requires explanation.
Ms Bhutto’s argument that President Ishaq has personally dealt her a rotten hand is credible. But Mr Nawaz Sharif’s studied silence is equivocal. Perhaps he is being a trifle ungrateful, considering everything President Ishaq has done to make, and keep, him prime minister.
Of course, it might have nothing to do either with Mr Sharif’s thankless nature or with Ms Bhutto’s personal ire. Maybe the present system is really unworkable, maybe the concentration of such power to hire and fire in the hands of a person like Mr Khan is genuinely problematic. How credible is this view?
To all intents and purposes, Mr Khan is an autocratic, cold-war warrior in a post cold-war Pakistan which is desperately seeking its democratic moorings. So it might be sensible to have a younger, more forward-looking and less stubborn man sitting in the Presidency. But the question of the 8th amendment is an altogether different matter.
It is true that the 8th amendment smacks of a dictatorial legacy that most Pakistanis abhor. But simply repealing it and thereby making the office of the prime minister all powerful could very well make the system more, not less, unaccountable.
Consider how the exploitation of unchecked power went to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s head, how it debased democracy and made the country ungovernable, tempting Gen Zia to step in and overstay his welcome. Or how Ms Bhutto treated Mr Sharif so unfairly when she was PM and he was CM Punjab. Or how, given a free rein, Mr Sharif’s voracious appetite for financial empire-building coupled with vaulting political ambition would undoubtedly make him the most oppressive ruler in history.
No. Our politicians must be accountable, we need checks and balances on them because they have an in-built propensity to be despotic, corrupt and inefficient. The 1973 constitution, which was drafted after the Westminster model in which the office of the PM is more powerful than the office of the President in the US system, is not equipped to suitably mediate the pluralistic claims of our state and society. If the device of the 8th amendment has proved to be an untrustworthy intrusion, we need to replace it with something which is more organic and less capricious. What might that be?
Instead of the office of the President, a body comprising all the pillars of state and society might be better entrusted with the powers of the 8th amendment. Such a body, call it what you will, might be comprised of the following 12 members: 7 Representatives of Society — PM, Federal Defense Minister, Federal Interior Minister and the four Chief Ministers of the provinces; 3 Functionaries of the State — CJ Supreme Court, Chairman JCSC and COAS; and 1 Head of State — President (Chairman).
Such a body would eliminate the possibility of any misunderstanding or tension between the organs of the state and the representatives of society, in particular those between the armed forces and civil society. It would make for greater cooperation between the federating units. It would relieve the Supreme Court of a profusion of embarrassments attendant upon the legitimacy of overly political matters. And it would allay the fears of opposition politicians that the ruling party is not accountable as well as those of representative government which may rightly resent the heavy hand of an indirectly elected President.
The 8th amendment was the handiwork of a particular military dictator who wanted to perpetuate himself in power indefinitely. The dictator is gone, thank God, but his patchwork remains. It remains because the conditions of political insecurity which provoked the adventurer into overthrowing a civil government have not withered away. Nor are they likely to do so for years, maybe decades, to come, such is the immaturity of our nationhood.
But that is no reason why Mr Ghulam Ishaq Khan must cling to a dictator’s legacies. If Mr Khan insists on remaining President for another five years, he may by all means be accommodated. However, the symbiotic relationship between the Presidency and the 8th amendment must come to an end. For democracy to succeed, the symbiosis between state and society needs to be less personalised and more organic.