General Pervez Musharraf promised to hold elections before the end of 2002 and he has kept his word. If he had so wanted, he could have deferred the polls on one pretext or another without worrying too much about the strictures of the Supreme Court (which takes a “pragmatic” view of the law of necessity) or censure of the international community (whose love for democracy is adulterated by practical considerations) or threat of political agitation (getting the voters out will be no mean task, forget about lighting fire on the streets). So let us give credit where it is due.
But the other side of the coin is smudged. General Musharraf had also vowed not to let Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif run for office and he has not relented despite the fact that both (Benazir more than Nawaz) still enjoy mass support and on that count alone had a right to contest the elections even if they didn’t deserve to do so. In fact, he has gone to extraordinary lengths to deny their rights, including a constitutional amendment to bar them from becoming prime minister for a third time.
General Musharraf had also explicitly determined to refashion the political system to reflect “true” rather than “sham” democracy. While we share his sentiment regarding the sham democracy of yesterday, his “true” democracy of tomorrow stands the very notion on its head and make us apprehensive. The core element of democracy, irrespective of the presidential or parliamentary nature of the political system, is civilian supremacy. But “Musharrafic democracy” grants an institutional political role to the armed forces by permitting the National Security Council to put a gun to the head of every parliament, prime minister and chief minister and order them to do its bidding. What if they still don’t?
“Musharrafic democracy” lays down a host of preconditions to preclude such a possibility. It requires that no political party or group, least of all the PPP or PMLN, should be able to get a majority in parliament and strike out on its own. This, in turn, requires a degree of pre-poll rigging – using the intelligence agencies, the NAB, the courts and the central and provincial administrations to split the PMLN, bar Bhutto and the Sharifs, prop up the PMLQ, and encourage dissenters from all the “opposition” parties to stand as pro-Musharraf “independents” – to produce “positive” results conducive to Musharrafic democracy.
Secondly, it requires that under no circumstances should any conceivable grouping of opposition parties, especially between the PPP and PMLN, be able to muster a 2/3rds parliamentary majority to overthrow the constitutional amendments that form its bedrock. This also means that the hand of the newly formed “internal security” apparatus will become more and not less ubiquitous after the elections in continually “managing” the parties and parliaments in defence of Musharrafic democracy.
Third, it requires the continuing financial and political support of the international community, especially the US, so that the constitutional instability built into such an unnatural structure is not allowed to adversely impact the economy and provoke a populist backlash against its creators. This, in turn, means that Musharrafic democracy must deliver the strategic requirements of the international community, especially the US, at home and in the region and contend with its unpredictable consequences and backlash, or choose a more autonomous and conflictual path and risk a destabilising rupture as happened with previous military dictators.
This is a tall order. It involves continual juggling with slippery politicians, fickle foreign powers, unpredictable judges, argumentative journalists and restless masses, elements that combine to defy the Manichean black and white, managerial perspective of soldiers. What if the throw of the voters’ dice defies the “laws” of Musharrafic democracy and provokes a desperate numbers game in Parliament that discredits the whole process?
Our history shows that coalition governments in centralised systems have rarely been stable just as strong single-party governments in autocratic cultures have seldom been democratic. The problem with Musharrafic democracy is that it is fated to clutch at the worst of both such worlds for survival. If General Musharraf is to remain the real source of power, it will be necessary to fracture the polity so that no strong, organised political challenge can be mounted to him institutionally. But a fractured polity in a contentious political structure is a recipe for instability just as coalition governments under consensually built political systems are evidence of functioning democracies.
General Musharraf has been wrongly advised to marginalise the two mainstream parties for purposes of stability simply because they remain synonymous with their flawed leaders. It should have been the other way round. If circumstances have propelled him to Islamabad, he should have got the two errant but charismatic leaders to play by the agreed constitutional rules of the game (as General Waheed did in 1993). He should then have returned to Rawalpindi instead of staying on to rewrite the rules and knock out the two leaders and parties from the new game. Sooner or later this core truth will out. When it does, we hope that the well-meaning, moderate and pragmatic General Musharraf is able to grasp it and make amends.