October
19, 2007
The Musharraf-Benazir Deal: Its
Nature & Future
The deal incorporated into the
National Reconciliation Ordinance promulgated on
October 5, 2007 raises two basic queries: what is
its true nature, and what kind of a future it holds.
The deal has been struck by a man in uniform whose
popularity has been fast dwindling since last March
when he tried to get rid of his turbulent Chief
Justice, and a civilian leader who has had two stints
in office and was sacked both times on grounds of
corruption, to share power as President and Prime
Minister respectively and ostensibly to shepherd
the country from military to civilian rule.
In point of fact, the deal was brokered by the US
with the help of British Administration, so that
the two leaders join hands and utilize their military
and civilian resources to quash Al Qaeda and Taliban
who are reported to be regrouping in the tribal
areas of Pakistan and planning their terrorist activities.
Available indicators point to the possibility of
both objectives floundering on the rocks of ground
reality.
Musharraf and Benazir make the oddest couple. The
former has been particularly wary of soiling his
hands in any corruption scandal and has often shown
much disdain for Benazir’s corruption record.
She has 11 cases of corruption against her in the
courts of Pakistan and some cases in foreign lands.
Farooq Leghari, her handpicked President, had accused
her of having looted $1.5 billion of public money.
This makes the amnesty perhaps the biggest money
laundering case in the annals of world corruption.
. It makes honesty sound like a joke and plunder
patriotic.
In 1996, during Benazir’s second term, the
Berlin-based Transparency International rated Pakistan
the second most corrupt country in the world. Her
government’s poor record of economic management
prompted the IMF to temporarily freeze emergency
loans to Pakistan. The country was even being referred
to as a failed state in the unfriendly media of
some countries.
It may be recalled here that Musharraf was widely
hailed in the country when he grabbed the reins
of government in October 1999, primarily because
the people had become disgusted with the corruption
and mismanagement scandals of both Benazir and Nawaz
Sharif.
Over the past 5 years of Musharraf’s rule,
Pakistan has averaged 7% growth, the middle class
has expanded and a new generation of consumers has
surfaced in the wake of the economic expansion.
The dependence on IMF has been totally stopped.
It is also relevant to mention here that since 9/11,
Pakistan has received $10 billion in US assistance,
bulk of it for the military. In 2006, Pakistan was
at the top of the developing countries for acquiring
military hardware worth over $5 billion.
A recent bill passed by the Congress makes US aid
conditional on the US President’s certification
that Pakistan was doing all it could to fight terrorism.
That explains Musharraf’s exceptional regard
for the advice of the State Department.
His domestic popularity has plummeted since last
March owing to the countrywide agitations f the
legal fraternity against his decision to sack the
Chief Justice, the Lal Masjid episode seen in some
quarters as unwise, the surrender of over 260 of
his troops to Islamic militants in the tribal belt,
his clandestine negotiations with Benazir, and the
way he handled Nawaz Sharif’s return to Pakistan.
Musharraf is a strong-willed leader, but he does
lust for power, despite his public protests the
contrary; for, power is the most potent aphrodisiac
and he must be addicted to it. Also, he is a strong
believer in the unity of command and is thus inherently
opposed to the concept of power sharing.
On the other hand, Benazir too is a haughty, conceited
leader. And her sole aim is to acquire power by
hook or crook -the end, in her book, justifies all
unscrupulous means used to achieve it. For instance,
she stopped her party men from resigning from the
Assemblies before the October 6 Presidential election
according thereby legitimacy to Gen. Musharraf.
She has welcomed the opportunity to enter the seat
of power on military crutches. To ensure the support
of the US to her bid for power, she has offered
the IAEA access to A.Q. Khan for questioning and
to allow US soldiers on Pakistan’s soil to
go after Osama Bin Laden.
The Ordinance has been widely denigrated by the
country’s media. It has been view as a bad
law calculated to promote personal interests of
both parties with little to do with national reconciliation.
As an editorial in the daily Nation, Lahore, of
Oct. 10 has put it: “the whole deal was about
getting amnesty from paying back to the state exchequer
the billions she had stacked in her foreign accounts
and also to get back into power to make fortunes
once again”.
In the words of an editorial in Dawn the Ordinance
strengthens the view that crime goes unpunished
in Pakistan, and that too with official blessing.
The corrupt and the criminal will be emboldened
further by this get-out-of-jail free pass.
The “embarrassingly immoral” Ordinance
also grants immunity from arrest to elected representatives
like similar privileges already available to military
officials and the judiciary. This militates against
the basic concept of the equality of man. Common
man will be devalued further and incidents of crime
by the powerful and privileged, the land barons
in particular, are likely to go up. It grants, in
effect, a license for grand larceny to an exalted
few making it abundantly clear that there is one
law for the public and another for the Parliamentarians.
Several petitions have been filed by eminent persons
of the society against the Ordinance in the Supreme
Court as well as the Lahore High Court on the ground
that it went against human rights, the concept of
the equality of man, and some other basic precepts
enshrined in the Constitution. The Chief Justice
has already accepted the petitions for hearing by
a special Bench.
The Supreme Court has also admitted petitions against
Gen. Musharraf’s election as President. He
has advised Benazir to postpone her arrival in Karachi
set for October 18 till after the verdict of the
court on the challenge to his election. She has
rejected this advice. And this would be the first
difference of opinion in a series of clashes between
the two.
One is reminded here of what the sage of the East,
Saadi Shirazi, had said centuries back: A hundred
mendicants can sleep under a single blanket, but
two kings can’t be accommodated in one domain.
It is also a common saying that you cannot place
two swords into one scabbard.
Ruptured relationship between the two at the top
could therefore cause havoc in the society and stall
Pakistan’s rapid economic growth.
The US strategy to bring the two moderate leaders
together in an Islamic society where extremism is
on the rise is as unlikely to succeed as the numerous
strategies planned and executed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The conflict in the tribal belt of Pakistan is unlikely
to be resolved through the use of force. The earlier
peace deals with the elders of Waziristan were perhaps
the moves in the right direction. An unintended
consequence of the use of force has been the suspected
voluntary surrender of some Pakistani troops to
the Islamic militants because of ethnic and religious
affinities. Another sad consequence has been the
generation of hatred towards the army, particularly
its Punjabi component. Pakistan’s ideological
boundary has thus been shrinking!
The Ordinance might contain a grand strategy, but
in practice it is likely to prove counter-productive
and quite deleterious.
arifhussaini@hotmail.com
