Retrieving Democracy?

What has left most in a state of shock is the continuity in economic policy. The democratically elected government has not reversed a single major policy of the previous Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) government presided over by "dictator" Musharraf. The status quo remains; privatisation and liberalisation (including reduction of subsidies) will continue.

Where the coalition tinkered with previous policy by emphasising dialogue rather than a military response to the Taliban, the political compromise crafted by its junior partner, the ANP, is blowing up in the government's face. The Taliban are bent on continuing their armed insurrection, giving lie to liberals' myth-- that an elected government would enjoy greater political credibility in dealings with the extremists.

While President Musharraf launched military operations against armed extremists, the political opposition and liberals in one voice pilloried him as an American stooge prosecuting America's war in Pakistan. They turned a deaf ear to the President's repeated explanation that hewas fighting Pakistan's war. New Prime Minister Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani hasmeanwhile blithely U-turned and declared "Extremism and terrorism are our own problems. This is our own fight".

After one hundred days, the widespread perception is that the PPP-led coalition government is "dysfunctional"; that the country "is heading towards a political meltdown. It has fallen into a state of non-governance."

In desperation, Ardeshir Cowasjee faulted President Musharraf for failing to use his full dictatorial powers to rescue the country. "His job should have been to seek out, rear and nurture young, fresh, unpolluted, able and honest men and women and establish them in politics as his successors. That is what, as a good dictator with unlimited powers, he should have done. It is all too late." We do not know whether or not he could have groomed a fresh leadership. But the fact is the democracy activists harried the President virtually to death; they pestered him about his uniform and holding elections and in the end denied him the time and political space in which he may have built a new national dispensation.

Before the February 2008 general elections, both PPP and PML-N while sitting in Opposition duplicitously heaped almost every economic woe on the President and his PML-Q government and shrilly accused them of mismanagement and incompetence. Most democracy activists-- including members of women's and human rights organisations, journalists, writers, lawyers and assorted professionals-- who are generally known as "liberals" joined the strident anti-Musharraf chorus.

The PPP and PML-N are the dominant partners in the coalition government. As prices of fuel and food continue to rise, now they are telling the people the reality: that inflation and economic problems are due to "structural factors", that is, their causes are invariably rooted in global trends and forces that are largely beyond the control of the present government.

But, as Ejaz Haider perceptively observed, "the common man, raised on a steady diet of government-bashing by the erstwhile opposition, refuses to accept the reality…[he] now wants this bunch to correct the situation by adopting the right policies." To cover up the government's policy vacuum, the Prime Minister began finger-pointing at President Musharraf: "dictatorship", he alleged, "was causing problems for elected representatives". Nevertheless, while the liberals shiftily demurred, Prime Minister Gilani (like President Musharraf before him) appealed to the nation "to give time".

What's more, democracy activists do not wish to be reminded they had joined the vast majority in the country in October 1999 to welcome Gen Musharraf's overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. As Rifaat Hamid Ghani documented, "there is no doubt the ouster of Mr Nawaz Sharif…was welcomed, and the primary reason was the constitutional amendment Mr Sharif was seeking (and which politicos like Mr Kasuri and Syeda Abida Hussain had endorsed) that united civil and moral legislative and executive inquisitorial powers in the prime minister's office, in what was touted as the paradigm of a true amir. The common Pakistani, as distinct from those gracing the treasury benches, had no truck with twisting religion into justifying totalitarianism. They could see the way elected parliament was leaning and the military takeover was a happy release from Mian Nawaz Sharif's emerging fascistic theocracy".

It staggers the mind that democracy activists, liberals or whatever nomenclature they choose for themselves seriously expected a democracy dividend from so-called "democratic forces"-- principally, the PPP and/or PML(N) government.

Again, Zardari was not impressed. After all, if NRO's architect President Musharraf is brought down, it is very likely he too would go down with him.

The All Pakistan Democracy Movement (APDM), however, was blunt. It employed what could be termed blackmail democracy. The APDM "warned PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari of exposing what it called his corruption of billions of rupees if he failed to restore judiciary to its pre-emergency status." So the APDM also seems confident that if Zardari supports reinstatement then, in return, the politicised judges would keep the lid firmly closed on that Pandora 's Box-- the NRO.

Lest we forget, all this to cajole and prod into action two unelected, unrepresentative politicians.

Why, then, did approximately 60 members of the judiciary refuse oath under the 2007 PCO? As one of them-- a High Court judge -- glibly explained to us, the judiciary rubber stamped the 2000 PCO but rejected the one President Musharraf promulgated seven years later because, he alleged, in the interregnum the judges went through "a process" of maturation and became more aware of their constitutional responsibilities.

Without a doubt one must welcome the judiciary's effort to dig, though belatedly, an independent furrow. That could indeed be a welcome departure from more than five decades of subservience to the political establishment. As Hussain H. Zaidi noted, "the apex court was called upon to adjudicate on the legitimacy of the 1958 martial law regime in The State versus Dosso and Others. The court…headed by Justice Mohammad Munir and drawing inspiration from Hans Kelsen's doctrine of necessity, held that a successful revolution or coup d'etat was an internationally recognised method of changing a constitution. Hence, the Laws (Continuation in Force) Order 1958 promulgated by Gen Ayub constituted the new legal regime from which all legal instruments and institutions including courts derived their validity and legitimacy."

A few judges who resisted the executive's interventions during the intervening five decades were invariably penalised; and it is by no means clear whether they sought to strengthen judicial independence or were caught up in personality conflicts with the executive.

In the event, the judiciary as a whole remained under the control of the executive, especially in Gen Zia-ul-Haq's martial law regime. Consequently most judges have been inexorably politicised through their willingness to accommodate demands of the political establishment, which includes the succession of military rulers.

The inevitable question that comes to mind is: how come in 2007 the judiciary re-discovered the wheel?

One plausible reason is that the politicised judiciary had gone along with the 2000 PCO because Gen Musharraf's takeover enjoyed near universal political support within the country.

So the uncharacteristic stiffening of the judicial spine against the 2007 PCO has perhaps more to do with the political perception that President Musharraf by then was unpopular. Was the judiciary again playing at politics? That seems to be the case. Indeed if the horse deal the President of Supreme Court Bar Association offered Zardari is anything to go by, the judiciary is as usual neck deep in politics.