Now Deliver, Prime Minister
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
So the easier part is done. The parliament, by near-consensus, has approved the 21 st amendment to the constitution paving the way for military courts to deal with crimes of terrorism with alacrity. The stage is set for a terrorism-haunted and psychologically-beleaguered Pakistan to take the battle to the enemy threatening to undo its integrity.
Nawaz Sharif couldn’t have asked for more. The nation, at least for now, seems to have conceded to him the leadership role. That’s sensible of the people and political parties. Nawaz owes it to Imran Khan who made this possible by suspending his Dharna.
Imran had Nawaz on the ropes. One more blow on his jaws and the gutless PM would’ve thrown in the towel. But Imran put the nation above himself, above his party and everything else he and his comrades had so steadfastly pursued the past four months. He realized that it was no time for politicking. A nation on the brink of disaster had to be pulled back from the brink. So he relented to rally around the government for the sake of Pakistan.
The catalyst for the sea-change in Nawaz and his lackluster coterie of knaves and poltroons was, without doubt, the tragedy of Peshawar’s Army School. The mayhem of 134 innocent children was a trauma beyond anybody’s bearings, least of all a wounded nation like Pakistan.
So it would be out of sync with popular sentiment to give the credit for the extraordinary bonhomie seen in the National Assembly of Pakistan on January 6—the day the 21 st constitutional amendment was passed.
It wasn’t that political parties were all of a sudden touched by evangelic sentiment and decided to coalesce under the government’s banner. Their hands were forced, as was the government’s hand, by the groundswell of public support for the battle to be taken to the murderers who’d the gall to snuff out so many innocent lives in one barbaric act of terrorism.
Who could’ve imagined, otherwise, that a lackadaisical man like Nawaz—known for his laid-back style of governance—would be so robustly jogged into action as to let the murderers of innocent children know—in no uncertain terms, at that—that he’d be chasing them to every nook and cranny of Pakistan and hunt them down with no mercy.
All credit to Pakistan’s civil society that has been given a hefty shot in its arm by the trauma of Peshawar. They have finally come to realise the importance of their role as a catalyst of change. For the first time in decades they have been awakened not only to their pivotal role in a democratic polity but also to their responsibility of overseeing the performance of the government saddled in power with their votes.
With the passage of the 21 st amendment to constitution the easier part is done for both the people and their leaders. The harder part should now begin without further ado. It’d be a test for both the rulers and the ruled.
The civil society of Pakistan owes it to the legacy of those 134 children—who galvanized them into a force to be reckoned with—to stand in guard over the government and make sure that the mandate handed to it is carried out to the people’s highest expectations.
Nawaz, of course, has the heavier weight to pull. He and his bumbling minions have always had this fetish for a ‘heavy mandate.’ They used to glibly talk of it even when they didn’t have it. Now they have it in the truest sense of the word. Not that they earned it on their merit. They owe it to the sheer coincidence of the sea-change in the national narrative triggered by the trauma of Peshawar.
A nation at war has reluctantly conceded to the time-tested wisdom that you don’t change horses in mid-stream. Ordinarily a nation at war doesn’t change its leader unless there’s a Winston Churchill around as handy replacement for a failure Chamberlain.
Nawaz pretty much behaved like Chamberlain in his failed attempt to appease and placate the murderous Taliban. They didn’t oblige him with peace, just as Hitler didn’t cater to Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. So, now, Nawaz has the challenge of his life to prove himself as worthy of his nation’s trust in him as did Churchill to his people.
One will have to be naïvely optimistic in the extreme to believe that Nawaz would hold a candle to Churchill, although Pakistan is, without doubt, as much into an existentialist war as was Britain in World War II. The predatory Taliban are as grave a peril for the future of Pakistan as were the Nazis to Britain’s.
But let’s be honest to the man and his limited capabilities. He’s no Churchill and never could be. Despite that—and his limited visceral and intellectual credentials aren’t a secret to anyone—the nation has taken a big gamble by wagering its money on Nawaz and hoping—against hope, no doubt—that the weight of responsibility entrusted to him would do some magic and raise him to the minimum level expected of him.
Pray, dear Pakistanis, and hold on to your optimism. You’d need it in droves as we go down the treacherous route that leads to the sanctuaries and hide-outs of the Taliban. There would be bumps aplenty, en route and trap doors to devour us and dislodge us from the path that goes to the enemy’s heartland. What we will have to be most mindful of is the progress of the establishment on the road of taking the war to the cowards. We must keep a hawk’s eye out on the government, the leadership and all their paraphernalia to make sure they aren’t about to buckle or waver from the path charted for them.
There’s one great thing going for both the nation and Nawaz. It’s the military establishment. They are fully on board with the people and the civilian setup in what General Raheel Sharif has rightly articulated as the nation’s war.
It isn’t a secret that the military leadership has played a pivotal and critical role, behind the scene as well as upfront, in convincing the politicos of the wisdom of people’s vociferous demand for transparent and quick justice meted out to terrorist criminals. It’s quite understandable that in the process of putting a sharp accent on the people’s demand the brass may have stepped on many a toes and twisted a few elbows, here and there. At least the brass was more alive to the popular sentiment than a foodie PM Nawaz.
That brings up the issue of military courts trying terrorists and others of their ilk on a summary basis. The 21 st amendment to the constitution has now made military courts an essential part of the justice system needed to bring terrorist criminal to book.
There’s a lot of chest-thumping going around among the intelligentsia of Pakistan. The mourning, ostensibly, is for the constitutional role granted to military courts. Naysayers are ruing the passage of the 21 st amendment as a “sad day” in the history of Pakistan.
A pseudo democrat like Senator Raza Rabbani of PPP is shedding crocodile tears for having voted “against his conscience” when he endorsed his party’s decision to support the idea of military courts. He says he never felt so ashamed in his life before.
What cheek Rabbani has in presenting himself as a man of conscience who has sacrificed so much of his moral probity in voting for the amendment. Surprising, isn’t it, that the man felt no pang of conscience when he served, for five long years, under the brazen Zardari?
Let there be no issue on it that no democracy can be proud of military courts, even when checks and balances are built into the system—as in the 21 st amendment—to guard against abuse of power by these courts.
At the same time, there should be no misgiving on the fact that extraordinary circumstances have spawned this necessary and unavoidable ‘evil.’
No one would’ve given a second thought to the need for military courts had our regular system of justice delivered to the people’s expectations of transparent and agile justice. But a corrupt and moth-eaten judicial and bureaucratic setup dashed all such expectations. The archaic, time-consuming and translucent system of justice dashed all hopes that it would deal with the scourge of terrorism as desired by the people.
There’s, of course, no guarantee that military courts would be an ideal—or even most efficient—substitute for regular judicial system known to the people. But the people’s faith is riding on them, and faith under the extraordinary circumstances that Pakistan is grappled with is a great asset to hold on to.
Yes, the intelligentsia has a right to be skeptical and suspicious of the military’s ingress into the civilian domain. The Pakistanis have lingering bitter and unsavoury taste in their mouth of the military inroads into politics. It isn’t unnatural at all for a people bitten once too often by Bonapartes to be shy and wary of them in any garb or disguise.
However, there’s a huge qualitative difference between the unfolding discourse and past narratives.
In the past, military adventurers had burst on to the scene at the cost and expense of democratic leaders. This time around it’s the democratic leaders themselves who have asked the military to lend them a helping hand to deal with a menace too heavy and cumbersome to be dealt entirely on the civil side of the court. The army hasn’t invited itself into the equation but asked by the democratic dispensation for help.
The military courts ushered in under the new scheme have an expiry date: two years, and no more.
The Cassandras and the Jeremiahs are sneering at this façade of military courts shelf-life too. They are reminding the people and politicos that General Ziaul Haq had presented himself to the people as a 90-day referee but stayed on for 11 long years. So, they argue, don’t be tricked by the ‘best-before’ time syndrome.
They have a point, but not quite. Ziaul Haq’s promise was a Bonaparte’s word. This shelf life is mandated by the highest law of the land. Have faith in those who have passed this law. More than anybody else they, the law-makers, are conscious of it that they shouldn’t let the khakis poach on their turf indefinitely.
Military courts may not be an idea whose time has come. But it’s an idea worth experimenting. By the same token, Nawaz Sharif is not Churchill. But Pakistan at war can’t dump its Chamberlain for the simple reason that there’s no Churchill around. There in is Nawaz’ chance of a lifetime to prove that he isn’t totally gutless, after all. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
(The writer is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
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