Syed Fakhr Imam, a former Muslim Leaguer who is now out in the cold but was once a prominent politician, has called for a Truth and Reconciliation process to heal the wounds of incessant political conflict in order to cement a stable consensus in the national interest. This is an idea that we first advocated in this column in this paper in 2001 and to which we have returned many times in the last four years. Unfortunately, however, neither General Pervez Musharraf & Co nor Messrs Bhutto & Sharif have publicly warmed to the theme. Talking of the truth would mean confessing to crimes and misdemeanours, which is anathema to anyone, let alone politicians. And talking of reconciliation would imply a readiness to share power, which may be construed as a sign of political weakness by adversaries. It would also explain why those who have nothing to hide and those for whom the national interest comes above personal power brokerage should continue to articulate this demand.
What is the truth? Why is there a need for national reconciliation? What sort of reconciliatory strategy will yield fruit?
The truth is that we are all naked in this hamam. Neither politicians nor political parties practice democracy or have much personal or institutional integrity. Indeed, politics is personality-driven, not issue-oriented, and parties are fiefdoms and legacies. Political governments are more or less corrupt and more or less inefficient. Nor is there an irrevocable civil-military contradiction. Politicians in opposition have routinely nudged generals to destabilize governments and political leaders in government have routinely paid obeisance to generals and done their bidding.
The generals, too, are in the same hamam.Pakistan has fought three wars under three generals with disastrous results. The generals have huge interests in land and real estate, in trade and commerce. In the 1950s they became landlords. In the 60s and 70s they coveted the status of businessmen. In the 1980s and 90s they consolidated their gains and also became contractors and service providers. Now they are into real estate development in a big way. This is corruption by another name because it is done under special laws decreed and interpreted by the generals in an unaccountable and rigged framework. Concomitant with their business energy and commercial acumen are determined attempts to dominate the civil service and emasculate the judiciary. The generals have been in and out of bed with all sorts of politicians. Now they want to formally bring the army in “in order to keep it out”.
If the truth is unsavoury, then the pot shouldn’t call the kettle black. The need for reconciliation between the generals and politicians has arisen because the legacy of the politicians (a bankrupt economy) and the legacy of the generals (a bankrupt national security policy) has progressively laid the country low. When one has ruled, the other has tried to destabilize the polity, hurting the nation more than each other. So what is needed is a grand reconciliation between the two that self-consciously admits of their respective failings and seeks to establish a less self-righteous, less antagonistic, less incompetent, and less corrupt partnership of power and office sharing in which the rules of the game are firmly established as non-exclusive and non-dominant signposts to national consensus and stability.
The current national context is especially propitious for such a reconciliation process. Despite his best efforts, General Musharraf has, like his military predecessors, failed to establish a credible process of popular consensus, institutional succession and policy continuity. For a nuclear armed country awash with radical political Islam that is internationally committed to a comprehensive strategic “about turn”, this is an unacceptable state of affairs. Despite Musharraf’s best efforts, the PPP remains the most popular party in the country and cannot be continuously thwarted by electoral rigging. Meanwhile, his pet project of the military-mullah alliance has backfired. It has succeeded so well in Balochistan that it has ousted the Baloch nationalists from provincial reckoning and provoked them to armed insurgency and terrorism. And it has failed so miserably in the NWFP that by providing succor to the mullahs it has led to safe havens for Al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorism. The paradox is that the more Musharraf seems to entrench himself by virtue of being both army chief and president, the more politically isolated he becomes. This makes it increasingly difficult for him to successfully mediate troubled domestic realities, demanding regional requirements and pressing international concerns. Has this self-evident truth sunk home or not?
Not so far. General Musharraf still seems bent on running a one party political system dominated by him personally and by the military institutionally. He may offer crumbs to the PPP in the next elections in order to downsize the mullahs, but he is not yet aiming for a truthful rapprochement with the largest and most popular party in Pakistan, nor one with the Baloch and Pakhtun provincialists, all of whom share his secular worldview and enlightened-moderation philosophy. In that sense Musharraf is out of step with the real demands of the times.