The
Unfinished Business of 1999
By Ahmed Quraishi
Islamabad, Pakistan
Someone
is trying to pull a ‘velvet revolution’
on Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf. And anyone
who believes this is about democracy is a fool.
Many in Washington and inside its inept puppet
administration in Kabul are trying to find a scapegoat
for their failures in Afghanistan. And a bankrupt
and unimaginative Pakistani political class is
being opportunistic as usual. Musharraf must counter
this with determination. The Pakistani president
owes this to the uncounted silent Pakistanis who
backed his original reform agenda of 1999.
The events of the last few weeks and months reinforce
the notion held by a segment of Pakistanis that
restoring a premature democracy in Pakistan in
2002 was a wrong step. It re-empowered a largely
mediocre political class, undercut efforts to
cultivate grassroots democratic conditions, and
disappointed ordinary Pakistanis who dreamed of
fundamental change.
Our best bet was an enlightened, guided democracy,
giving ordinary Pakistanis the chance to produce
new leadership. What we got after 2002 is a half-baked
deal. Apart from partially tarnishing President
Musharraf’s image, his new political ‘allies’,
products of the 2002 election, failed to back
him in crucial moments, during an insurgency,
for example, by a politician-turned-terrorist
in our Balochistan province last year, and during
the so-called ‘judicial crisis’ last
month.
President Musharraf hasn’t lost the battle.
Not yet at least. He must assert power, reunite
the silent majority of Pakistanis like he did
before, and give his bold reform agenda one last
push. He must bank on younger Pakistanis where
his popularity is highest. His legacy must be
a strong and proud Pakistan and a political culture
that is thoroughly reformed of its chronic ills.
Beginning with the visit of US president George
W. Bush to Pakistan in March 2006, and ending
with the events of the weeks following March 9
this year, it’s clear that odd bed fellows
with opposing objectives are coming together to
unseat one of the most decisive and nationalist
presidents our nation has seen in a long time.
The entire anti-Musharraf campaign claims its
roots in democracy. That is a brazen lie. Independent
Pakistani television networks – the most
visible sign of a vibrant Pakistani civil society
– are a gift of this so called ‘military
dictator.’ In fact, one glance at the quality
of leadership of our political elite, especially
the one that ruled the country in the 1990s, and
the notion it could have had the stomach to unleash
and nurture such a free media in Pakistan seems
ridiculous at best. No political leader in Pakistan
has ever tolerated the kind of criticism President
Gen. Musharraf is tolerating these days from the
independent Pakistani TV stations.
Whether anyone likes to admit it or not, a military-led
administration in Pakistan has laid the foundation
of a vibrant economic and political liberalization
in the country unlike anything most Pakistanis
have seen since the 1960s.
A second misleading claim in this anti-Musharraf
campaign is that somehow an ‘exiled’
secular and democratic Pakistani ‘leadership’
exists that could do a better job than President
Musharraf.
If this leadership is so secular and democratic,
how come their political parties don’t reflect
those core values? Why it is that Mrs. Benazir
Bhutto is a ‘lifetime chairperson’
of her party in the worst tradition of Central
African ‘banana republics’? Why it
is that dissent is unthinkable within the ranks
of Mr. Nawaz Sharif’s own political faction?
The truth is, the worst stereotypes about Pakistan
would have come true by now – Talibanization,
extremist nuclear takeover, disintegration –
had this great nation continued to be governed
by politicians of the caliber we have seen in
the 1990s. Anyone supporting politicians of this
caliber is not serving the cause of democracy
in Pakistan.
Our nation needs an enlightened, guided democracy
with fundamental changes in its constitution and
political culture. And President Musharraf is
capable of delivering this agenda.
A reform-minded president like him who seized
power in extraordinary circumstances – [his
plane was hijacked in the air by a serving prime
minister and told to land in India !] –
cannot have his hands tied by a set of laws that
may simply not be suitable to the country and
need to be changed.
Our parliamentary form of government is at the
core of the ineffectiveness of the Pakistani political
system. Our experience of the 1960s, 1970s, and
the present administration should encourage President
Musharraf to introduce a robust presidential form
of democracy in Pakistan .
After empowering ordinary Pakistanis, women and
minorities by setting up local governments across
the nation, the Musharraf administration needs
to follow up by increasing the administrative
units in the country from four provinces into
at least a dozen more. This will strengthen Pakistan,
improve services, and put an end to narrow ethno-religious
politics.
On foreign policy, Washington must clearly be
told that our cooperation in the war on terror
cannot come at the expense of our people’s
interests, especially when we have outdone the
Americans, NATO and the inept Afghan security
forces combined. On Kashmir, the position declared
by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz – trade in
exchange for progress on Kashmir – will
positively resonate with millions of Pakistanis.
And on Palestine, Musharraf must continue his
efforts to bring peace between Israel and the
Palestinians on the condition that parties to
the conflict must recognize each other’s
right to exist.
President Musharraf has been trying hard to convince
his opponents that he is a liberal democrat. He
shouldn’t. His opponents will never acknowledge
it. That’s part of our ailing political
culture.
To change it, one of the biggest changes the Musharraf
administration can bring is to force our political
parties to hold internal elections. No party should
be eligible to contest elections if the observers
of the Election Commission cannot certify that
the political party in question held free and
fair internal elections.
President Musharraf has given Pakistan the most
stable, visionary, and forward-looking leadership
our nation has seen in years. Single-handedly,
he expanded Pakistan’s role from being just
another South Asian country to a nation playing
wider roles in West and Central Asia. In order
to get over his recent problems, both real and
invented, he needs to go back to the promise that
propelled him in the eyes of his compatriots back
in October 1999.
That is his unfinished agenda.
ahmed-quraishi@myway.com
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