Portrait of Machiavelli by Santi di Tito, via Wikimedia Commons
Machiavelli Should Envy the Contemporary Bonaparte
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
Machiavelli has been infamous, through centuries, for being the high-priest of expediency as an indispensable necessary tool of governance. He’s the one whom gurus of morality in politics and governance fault for injecting the venom of deceit and guile as an art form of governance.
The ascendancy and popularity of people-based, participatory, democracy in the West was believed to have snuffed the life out of Machiavelli’s “Prince,” his euphemism for autocrats, dressed up as popular leaders of men. But little did Western thinkers—who thought they had buried Machiavelli’s philosophy of ‘whatever is governed best is best’ for good—realize that Machiavelli would have a re-birth in societies, like Pakistan’s, where his role model for expediency-based autocracy would be justified in the foil of ‘rule-of-necessity.’
If there was ever a contest among, what’s patronizingly called in Western democracies as the ‘Third World’ countries, as to which country in the league had embraced Machiavelli as their ordained prophet-for-governance, Pakistan would win the contest, hands-down.
Pakistani Bonapartes are no novices to the Machiavellian-endorsed art of governance; they have been in the thick of Pakistani politics for decades—seven decades, to be exact. They know all the ins and outs of how to hold a country of 240 or 250 million people to ransom. They may not have won a war against any of Pakistan’s myriad enemies but have a record—that would have made Machiavelli proud—of winning countless ‘wars’ against the brow-beaten people of their own country.
Pakistani Bonapartes tasted the captivating broth of ‘how-to-meddle’ in politics and governance of the newborn country of Pakistan within years of its birth as a sovereign state.
To put it in the correct perspective of history, their flirtation with politics commenced with the then Governor-General, Ghulam Mohammad’s arbitrary dissolution of Pakistan’s first Constituent Assembly, in 1954. The cabinet that was formed in its wake had the first Pakistani C-in-C of the army, General Ayub Khan, doubling down as Defense Minister, too.
Ghulam Mohammad’s coup against Pakistan’s democracy in its womb should go down in the country’s history as a watershed because it spawned an Axis-of-Interest that spanned decades and never allowed democracy to come out of its infancy.
The ‘Axis’ had the country’s top judiciary, its power-hungry army generals (Bonapartes), and demagogues, dressed up as people-friendly politicos, as its three components. The Axis thrived because the ‘law-of-necessity’ invented by the then head of the judiciary, Justice Munir, to justify Ghulam Mohammad’s illegal act, came in handy to sanctify the coup against Pakistan’s teething democracy by each succeeding Bonaparte of Pakistan—from General Ayub Khan to General Qamar Bajwa.
It was this ‘axis-of-evil’ that engineered the truncation of Pakistan, in December 1971, when the Eastern wing of the country was forced out of the Federation, because the then-Bonaparte, General Yahya Khan, wouldn’t brook the ‘un-savory’ idea of sharing political power with Sheikh Mujib, the leader of East Pakistan.
The health of the ‘axis’ remained robust even after the calamity of losing half the country. It gave birth to two more coup d’etats, in 1977 and 1999 and witnessed the rise of two more Bonapartes—Generals Ziaul Haq and Pervez Musharraf—who lorded over the country for two decades, between them.
However, the axis seemed becoming unstuck under the new generation of conscientious judges elevated to superior courts.
Rumblings of discontent in the new breed of superior judiciary judges could be heard, loud and clear, when six honorable judges of Islamabad High Court wrote a joint letter to the then Supreme Court Chief Justice, the ignoble Faez Isa, and to the Supreme Judicial Council, complaining about crude pressure on them, from the country’s Intelligence agencies and their hyper-active sleuths. The pressure was being mounted, crudely and in cavalier style, not only on judges, alone, but on their families, too, to force judges to tailor their verdicts to suit the military brass’ convenience.
Of course, nothing has come out, in kind, in response to the judges’ collective complaint of grievances. But the Bonapartes lording over the country from Rawalpindi —the real fortress of power in Pakistan—got an early fright. To them, it sounded the alarm. They interpreted the judges’ open rebellion against the decades-old nexus, between the general’s uniform and the judge’s robes, which could, from their perspective sound the death knell of the hybrid system of governance they had honed to their convenience, and supremacy, over decades.
The angst of the Bonapartes quickly triggered the move to bring in the recent, and highly contentious, 26 th Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan. The obscene haste with which the notorious ‘amendment’ was bulldozed, within hours, through both Houses of the Pakistani Parliament underlined the Bonapartes’ fright, and desperation, to snuff out the judiciary’s challenge to their chokehold over the country, lest it toppled them from the pedestal of power.
However, General Asim Munir—the reigning Bonaparte—didn’t seem convinced that the chains put around the arms and feet of the top judiciary, under the 26 th Amendment, was enough to obviate the presumed ‘assault’ on his rampart of power. He sought further guarantees that his turf—and that of his henchmen and cohorts-in-uniform—would remain beyond anyone’s reach to poach on it.
He didn’t have to turn any screws on the puppets he has installed in power, following the brazen, mid-night, theft of the people’s mandate of last February 8 th Elections in favor of Imran Khan and his Tehreek-e-Insaf Party (PTI).
The puppets dangling at the end of his string of power need only be commanded to legislate in favor of extending his tenure-in-office from the hitherto 3-year term to 5 years.
But he wasn’t to stop there. He commanded his puppets to also legislate that at the end of his 5-year term in office, he would still be eligible for another 5 years. And, adding insult to the people of Pakistan’s injury, the mandatory age, of 64 years, of retirement of a general wouldn’t also apply to him.
Asim Munir has done what no other Bonaparte before him could do: he has legitimized his autocratic rule by instituting an iron-clad ‘legal’ cover for his longevity in power. Under the new dispensation, Asim Munir’s rule would go on until the end of 2032, if all goes well.
But the hangover of the heady wine of raw power could turn out to be short-lived—like all hangovers—if the incoming administration of Donald Trump, in Washington, has other ideas for Pakistan and its power dispensation. The long night of Bonapartes, in Pakistan, could see a different dawn than what Asim Munir has planned if the second Trump stint in power doesn’t see eye to eye with him.
The grapevines in Washington are already buzzing that Trump has assured Imran Khan’s supporters—who have lobbied hard on behalf of their incarcerated leader—that he would like to see IK released from his illegal bondage, as soon as possible.
It could be wishful thinking, on the part of IK’s aficionados that the incoming American leader would lean hard on the Pakistani Bonapartes to release IK at his command. But Asim Munir and minions can’t afford to take DT lightly. He’s a man of hard likes and dislikes and has the reputation of being anti-establishment—a trait he shares in common with IK.
It’s also a fact that DT and IK had developed a liking for each other and the chemistry and rapport between them was of a special kind.
Contrary to the ongoing propaganda of the puppets’ regime, Pakistan’s wobbly economy isn’t out of the woods, yet. It still begs favors, from its wealthy Gulf Sheikhs and China, for a bailout. Its dependence on US-dominated lending institutions, such as the IMF, renders it particularly vulnerable to US hegemony over the IMF and its ilk.
Pakistan, with a begging bowl in its hands, could ill afford to rub DT on the wrong side.
-K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)