It’s Revenge, Not Democracy
By Ahmed Quraishi
Islamabad, Pakistan
In Pakistan, return to democracy is threatened by a return to chaos. Revenge is apparently the first order of business for some of the new winners in the election. Frivolous confrontation is not in Pakistan’s national interest. Remember: At present, Pakistan can afford a flawed political system, but not a weak one.
The issue of the restoration of the former chief justice is a farce that needs to be stopped. There are many ways to ensure a future independent judiciary in Pakistan. But the return of a group of biased, politicized and vengeful judges is not necessary unless the only thing on the minds of the advocates of this option is exacting political revenge from President Pervez Musharraf.
If this election was about restoring the deposed judges, how come an overwhelming majority of Pakistanis ignored the strong appeals by Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan and Mr. Imran Khan to boycott the poll?
It is unbelievable how the two gentlemen, who opted to stay out of the political process for the next five years, are now doing everything possible to hijack the mandate of those politicians who ignored those silly boycott calls and participated in the election and chose to be part of the process. Shouldn’t the media question why Mr. Ahsan and Mr. Imran are claiming more political space for themselves than their due share?
Is it healthy for a fledgling Pakistani democracy to allow lawyers and judges to take precedence over the Parliament? Who will decide in the future how our democracy will run: the Parliament or the judges? In their blind political hatred, some of our politicians are committing a mistake that will haunt them in the future.
There is no question that the scenes of police mistreatment of Mr. Iftikhar Chaudhry on March 9, 2007, were unacceptable for all of us. But turning him into a democratic hero is an insult to any thinking person.
His resounding ‘No’ on that day has been overly romanticized by his supporters as a case of one man standing up to powerful military generals. This romanticism was the work of left-wingers in our media and politics whose worldview is shaped by the struggles of the past century.
Mr. Chaudhry stood up for nobody but his job. The man put up an impressive fight for his job. Aitzaz Ahsan’s jump into the fray was the calculated move of a politician and not a lawyer. The judge was up against Mr. Musharraf and that was good reason to support him. That’s politics.
Never in his career did Mr. Iftikhar Chaudhry ever claim a fight for judiciary or for democracy. And if he did, he certainly relinquished that claim the day he agreed to take oath from a military regime and ditched his colleagues who resigned on principle after the military coup.
There is also no question that Mr. Chaudhry is tainted beyond repair. After his reinstatement on July 20th, he received a second chance to prove that his was a fight for principles. Instead, he did everything possible to leave no doubt that he was biased, politicized, and vengeful. He led the judiciary to a near civil war with important pillars of the Pakistani state. That was a unique precedent even by the standards of the world’s oldest democracies.
What is worse than advocating the return of the politicized judges is to see some politicians hiding behind this issue to avoid the real problems facing the Pakistani nation. It will be a tragedy if the opportunity of the fairest election in Pakistani history is squandered on revenge politics, which is exactly where things appear to be headed if cooler minds don’t prevail soon.
No one should say this is what we want the Pakistani democracy to look like. We deserve better, more refined standards. A new Pakistani political culture would mean that some of the tried, tested and failed politicians be recognized and be given a second chance, or a third chance to be more accurate. It would also mean that some of the vengeful politicians recognize President Musharraf in his new role. He should not be judged on the events of the past one year. Mr. Musharraf has contributed in good faith to Pakistan’s rise over the past five years. And his presidency can stabilize the transition to civilian democracy in a country where military input in policy cannot – and should not – be ignored.
The consequences of an unnecessary and an unavoidable confrontation do no bode well for Pakistan’s interests in the region and the world. We need to prop up a strong Pakistani state. And we need to do this sooner than later. In our haste for real democracy, we need to ensure that it does not descent into chaos. And the first step is to immediately end this dangerous slide into revenge politics.
At this stage in Pakistan’s democratic evolution, democracy is needed to strengthen the Pakistani system, not weaken it. We don’t have the luxury of a long, overdrawn process with many hiccups. The time for those experiments was the 20th century. And we wasted it. Now we need to get our act together. The Pakistani military is on board. President Musharraf has said he has no problems and is willing to work with everyone. The ball is with the politicians. Let’s hope that sanity prevails. WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM
