Opinion

A General’s Election
By Ahmad Faruqui, PhD
Dansville, CA

Barring an emergency, Pakistan will hold a general election for the national and provincial assemblies in the next few months. Up to now, the big mystery has been whether it will be preceded by a general’s election.
That mystery has now been resolved. Gen. Musharraf simply plans to ask the existing assemblies to re-elect him for a second five-year term and to elect him while he is in uniform.
Speaking to PML legislators in Karachi last Monday, the general declared his intention to “contest” his election from the existing assemblies. Citing a constitutional requirement, he said that the presidential election would need to be held a month before the end of his term, i.e., before the middle of October.
Such a re-election would be without parallel. We can only imagine what would happen if an incumbent two-term president in the United States declared that the existing electoral college would re-elect him for a third term. That would immediately trigger impeachment proceedings against him. The fact that he is not the army chief who seized power in a coup will not be regarded as attenuating circumstances.
Yet the general’s henchmen assure us that the act Musharraf is planning to commit is within the constitution of Pakistan. If that is true, then it is a sad commentary on the constitution. The head of the PML, Chaudry Shujaat, says that if need be, the general can declare a state of emergency “to save the country.”
Sub Rosa, he is telling us that his patron is not confident of winning the re-election by the existing houses even while he is in uniform. Circumstances have forced him to remind the country of the hidden weapon. Through the backdoor, Musharraf has sent a not-so-subtle hint to all parliamentarians that they still live at his mercy and need to vote for him.
The general has called on the people to unite in the fight against extremism. How could any sane man counsel otherwise? But do the people have to unite behind the commander who has fatigued them into submission? How can they trust him to lead them in the fight against extremism, knowing that much of that sociopathic condition can be traced to the military’s misguided pursuit of a proxy war in Kashmir and of strategic depth in Afghanistan?
No one had doubted that the general would ever want to directly face the electorate. But there were many who thought he would be willing to stand for re-election sans uniform. Others thought he would be willing to stand for re-election through a new parliament. He has disappointed both groups.
The nation has to ready itself to witness something akin to a freak astronomical phenomenon, like a red eclipse of the moon. A general in uniform who has ruled the nation for a goodly eight years being re-elected for a five-year term by a parliament whose own term has been allowed to expire. In keeping with the spirit of the time, the parliamentarians might as well re-elect each other, sparing both the time and expense of a general election. This would also avoid raising people’s expectations about the return of real democracy.
There is something mortifying about re-electing a president who serves both as head of state and head of government by virtue of serving as the army chief of staff. The Dual Offices Bill is essentially a Triple Offices Bill, something more Orwellian than George Orwell’s fiction.
If this Theatre of the Absurd is not worthy of a Pulitzer Prize in fiction, then what is? Even if the re-election were for a titular head of state, it would raise eyebrows. Nothing like this would even be imagined in India.
The irony is that the re-election in Pakistan is for the position of Dictator-in-Chief, not just a ceremonial ruler or proverbial figurehead. Maybe the general is seeking a re-enactment of Napoleon’s coronation, in which he took the crown from the alter and placed it on his own head, making the Pope who was standing by his side look quite redundant. Despite his ambition and overweening ego, Bonaparte did not pretend to be an elected ruler. He was content to simply be called the Emperor of France and the King of Italy.
In any democracy, the Chief Executive has to face a direct election. In a parliamentary system, the Prime Minister has to first win his seat before he can contest that post within parliament. In a presidential system, the president has to face a direct vote from the electorate. In Musharraf’s Pakistan, the only real electorate that he faces is the Corps Commanderate, whose members serve at his pleasure.
All the powers of the land, military and civilian, are concentrated in his hands. He has jack-sawed through the system of checks and balances that Jinnah had envisaged for Pakistan at its founding 60 years ago.
It has been replaced by a system in which one man can feel emboldened to suspend the Chief Justice on the “advice” of the prime minister. This decision was so egregious, so outlandish, so uncalled for, that even the full bench of the Supreme Court was compelled to over-turn it, even with a general at the helm.
Faced with such an embarrassing setback, either the prime minister or the president or both should have resigned. In Japan, one if not both would have subjected themselves to hari-kari.
All we got out of the stoic Mr. Aziz was a statement that the nation should accept such outcomes with maturity. One presumes that Aziz expects people to show the same maturity and swallow the general’s re-election by the existing assemblies.
At other times, the people are expected to become children and await the arrival of the New Year for some Good News. Presumably, that is supposed to be the general’s decision to retire from the army. Now why should that be good news if the uniform is essential to the nation’s survival and it is his second skin? Maybe he knows that the people are clamoring for the uniform to be taken off. If that is so, then he should not wait till the New Year. Best to take it off now and keep the good news from going stale.
Postscript. Musharraf’s decision to fake his re-election will do irreparable harm to the cause of holding a plebiscite in Kashmir. If Pakistan is unwilling to hold a real election within its own borders, what right does it have to lecture India on holding a plebiscite in Kashmir? India may well up the ante and ask Pakistan to first hold a referendum within its own borders on the validity of Musharraf’s re-election.

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