Opinion

Wanted: A Bold, Not A Timid, Musharraf
By Ahmed Quraishi
Islamabad, Pakistan

To the dismay of the hawks in the Pakistani strategic community, we have a military dictator who refuses to be what he’s really supposed to be: a military dictator. In his seven years in power, he has put up with more dissent and criticism – mostly from his supposed allies – than all of the Pakistani democratic regimes combined.
This may sound like praise, but is not. The following incident should tell you why. Exactly one year ago, in June 2006, in China’s bustling city of Shanghai, the Pakistani strongman, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, tried to sell Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and China’s president Hu Jintao on Pakistan’s worth as a strategic partner for both. (As an energy corridor for China and as a stabilizing factor for Russia’s Central Asian backyard.)
At the conference venue that brought the three leaders together, I informally gauged the reactions of some of the delegates. And I found skepticism. “You want to be our strategic partner,” one Russian journalist said to me, “but your country is unstable. Your leader is here today, gone tomorrow, with all his great ideas. You can’t say the same thing about Russian or Chinese leaderships.”
We may not be able to create a strong government in Islamabad on the lines of Moscow and Beijing, but we can’t also afford to be a banana republic, allowing a failed brand of Pakistani politics to take us down every time.
My point is this: Why a military dictator would want to be just another player in the country’s dirty, unstable and failed politics when he can come up with something better? Why the Pakistani military institution doesn’t opt for the creation of a system that brings out the best in the Pakistani people instead of recycling the same group of mediocre politicians?
As we waste our time and energy on a fabricated crisis since 9 March, our enemies use their pawns to kidnap Chinese citizens not in New Delhi or Washington, where it would make some sense, but right here in the heart of the capital of a Chinese ally, poisoning our ties with the Chinese people. At the same time, we are failing to intervene to secure our legitimate security interests in Afghanistan, where the Indians have virtually created a base for covert operations in our western provinces to keep Islamabad tied down.
Our failed parliamentary system of governance is obstructing Pakistan’s rise as a strong, responsible and credible power in the triangle of West, South and Central Asia. This failed system does not allow Pakistan’s best and brightest to cut through the monopoly of a stagnating political class and step forward to serve their homeland. This is a system that is destroying the potential of an otherwise creative and robust Pakistani nation.
And even if we rise on the strength of a reformed economy and a robust foreign policy, as the case is in the past five years, our domestic politics are so destructive they end up taking us back to square one.
Pakistan needs to make a clean break from this failed parliamentary system of governance that has lasted six decades. These days, as commentators talk about the failure of the setup that emerged from the 2002 elections, we have another chance at changing the system instead of perpetuating it.
The Musharraf administration needs to introduce a dramatic restructuring of Pakistani politics, sold directly to the silent majority of Pakistanis who are already fed up with our existing politics. This modified system has to be backed and guaranteed by our military institution as a long-term strategic commitment along the lines of the commitment that the Turkish military has made to that nation’s political system.
• President Musharraf must challenge our decaying politics by giving the nation a fresh constitution. Two-thirds of the Pakistanis are below 25 years of age. To them, future is more important than the past. The aging intelligentsia and politicians need to step aside and give Pakistan’s future a chance. The existing constitution creates conflict, doesn’t reflect ground realities, and cripples Pakistan’s potential as a rising power.
• Executive power must be strengthened and expanded if we want to see a strong government in Islamabad. This means axing the current parliamentary system. Gen. Musharraf must bolster his position by introducing a presidential form of democracy while retaining the command of the armed forces in order to ensure continuity in his role as the author of the system. A powerful presidency will be crucial to embed the new system in the Pakistani environment. A Pakistani president must have the power to appoint likeminded professionals in federal offices. We can benefit from the American and the French democratic models in this regard.
• We need to move beyond the current four provinces to at least a dozen or more, with more local governments. This will improve governance, create new local leaderships, weaken linguistic- and ethnic-based politics, and strengthen Pakistani nationalism.
• Stability will continue to elude Pakistan without introducing something close to a two-party system – possibly Pakistan Muslim League [PML] on the right and Pakistan People’s Party [PPP] on the left – alternating power.
• The Election Commission of Pakistan must introduce the requirement of a verifiable, free and secret ballot for the top slots within Pakistani political parties as a precondition to contesting elections. This will rid us of stagnating lifetime party leaderships, giving a larger number of Pakistanis a chance to serve the public and pave the way for a better class of politicians to rise.
It is far better for President Musharraf to be seen as an honest reformer than a shady politician. Power plays have hurt his image because ordinary Pakistanis have begun to see them as opportunism undermining his principled stand for a strong, emerging Pakistan.
In the current circumstances, Pakistan’s best bet is a bold, empowered president, not a timid one.
(Ahmed Quraishi is a Pakistani public affairs professional. He heads the Pakistan Task Force at FurmaanRealpolitik, an independent Pakistani think tank based in Islamabad. He also produces and hosts a weekly foreign policy show for PTV World. ahmed-quraishi@myway.com)

------------------------------------------------------------------------