A Rumor Of Lies

The hinge of fate as far as Pakistan was concerned turned, for better or worse, on October 12, 1999. It was on that day, when the Pakistani military intervened for the fourth time in the nation’s history and assumed the reins of power from civilian government. Only a few people are blessed or cursed, as the case maybe, when the pendulum of history swings and they discover themselves as an eyewitness to an historic event. For a majority of people in Pakistan, October 12,1999 marks a defining moment in Pakistan’s history because on that fateful October evening, Pakistan seems to have crossed a Rubicon of its national destiny. Pakistan, as a nation, seems to have entered a political terra incognita from which it is unlikely to return, because as the present regime delves into the political problems of Pakistan, it will find itself treading a path imperiled with obstacles and an increasing sense of despair. In many ways it would seem that the present regime has embarked on journey, not unlike Dante’s Inferno, where each level of misgovernment it encounters will be much worse than the last one.

The present situation in Pakistan is fraught with a sense of uncertainty and an expectation that this might well be the country’s last hurrah as a viable political entity and should the present military regime fail to deliver on its stated objectives, there will be no resurrection for Pakistan as a nation-state. The Pakistani publics’ hopes that the situation will improve for the better are extremely ill founded, because it apparently does not understand the dichotomy between the announcement of a political policy and its effective implementation. The greatest problem for the military regime in instituting its reformist policies, to revive the ailing nature of the Pakistani polity, as articulated by the Chief Executive of Pakistan, General Pervaiz Musharraf, is a lack of institutional support to implement those required policies. The present military regime is, thus, confronted by a set of foreordained circumstances, which do not offer an expedient methodology with which to rectify the last 53 years of compounded mistakes, which have now come to haunt the Pakistani political landscape. Consequently, if this regime is really serious and determined to rescue Pakistan from the quagmire of its own myopic follies, it would have to express its resolve via an irrevocable political will and not through holistic declarations of it intentions, no matter how pious they might sound.

The regime’s avowed aim, which is the restoration of a truly representative form of democracy in Pakistan, is far easier to utter than to implement in a pragmatic sense, because the necessary environment for the fruition of democracy does not exist in Pakistan. Hence, out of the seven original points mentioned by the Chief Executive, in his maiden speech to the nation on October 13, 1999, three points have emerged as the crucial litmus test by which the performance of this regime will be judged. These three points, devolution of power, the reforming the government, and accountability will ultimately determine whether this regime can deliver on its promises or not.

Taking the last first, the accountability process has become the Holy Grail for perpetuating ones’ legitimacy to govern in Pakistan and that is highly unfortunate, because accountability, in a democratic

process should not be seen as an end in itself, but rather a means towards an end; a more transparent and representative process of governance. Therefore, accountability should not be enshrined as a causa sine qua non of democracy, as it is presently being understood in Pakistan, but instead it should be seen as an ancillary, which acts as a self-correcting mechanism of a representative democracy. In other terms, accountability should never be considered as a viable substitute to democratic governance itself. Furthermore, the present military regime should be extremely cautious about the scope and zeal of its accountability crusade and it should, for the benefit of all concerned, delineate its definition of the accountability process from the publics’ understanding of the said term. In this regard, the military regime should clarify that it does not equate accountability with notions of vengeance, a criteria by which the Pakistani public seems determined to judge the present regime’s accountability drive.

Accountability, in the terms of Pakistani political lexicon, denotes a financial criteria, which suggests that the Pakistani public equates the idea of accountability with the notions of judging and punishing those corrupt officials and politicians who have stolen from the national treasury. It is a generally accepted idea in Pakistan that if those responsible for stealing the national wealth are punished and the looted wealth recovered, it will be the antidote for all of Pakistani financial ills. Due to this misplaced sense, the public equates democracy with accountability, but does not seem to understand that accountability, in a democratic society, has nothing to do with financial concerns, but rather with the very idea of political power itself. True democracy is not a right to vote for a political candidate, but the ability to transfer power peacefully between competing groups and the value of accountability, in a democratic society, lies in the obligation of its elected representatives to justify their conduct, while in office, to the general public who had voted for them. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, the accountability process has become an excuse to perpetrate ones’ rule, no matter how incompetent or despotic, as long as the government can victimize its political opponents in the guise of a democratically transparent façade. Therefore, due to the historical precedents in Pakistani history, the publics’ understanding of accountability is a mean spirited system, whose sole purpose is akin to a political punishment and which in reality has nothing to do with democracy, but is engineered to appease the publics’ appetite for retribution against an artificially created public enemy.

Hence, the public in Pakistan thinks that democracy is the ability to punish politicians for their past ills, but what it does not understand is that it is the publics’ own lack of understanding and a sense of impatience, which effectively fosters this situation in the Pakistani political arena. Consequently, the present regime has already suffered a creditability loss, because the Pakistani public is taking its snail paced progress on the issue of accountability as a sign of its own mea culpa in the matter and the fact that the present regime has excused military personnel and the judiciary from the scope of its accountability process has only lent further credence to this paranoia. The sad truth of the Pakistani situation is that the Pakistani people have been so brutalized, in the past half-century, by its cadre of political leaders that they are thirsting for revenge and the avenging furies, in Pakistan, will not be satisfied until they are presented by a sacrificial lamb, which will quench their blood-lust against their historic tormentors. Hence, the publics’ idea of accountability is based on the dictums of revenge and they do not desire a “fair process of accountability”, but rather a rolling of the political, industrial, bureaucratic, feudal, military, and judicial heads reminiscent of the justice meted out to the French aristocracy during the French Revolution. In lieu of this, the regime needs to educate the public as to what it means when it uses the term “accountability”, because the publics’ perception of accountability is vastly different than the regimes’, and herein exists a perceptional abyss, which if not bridged will further erode this regime’s legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

The regime needs to articulate this viewpoint, because it has already suffered a public relation’s credibility gap due to its lack-luster performance as evidenced in the aftermath of its November 16, 1999 deadline to take remedial action against the loan defaulters of Pakistan. The attendant perception of this has been that it is, “business as usual” is gaining political currency and that is further eroding this regime’s ability, in the eyes of the public, to deliver on its promises. The logic behind this creeping sense of apathy in the present regime is rooted in the mechanism of its intentions by which it hopes to implement and thus, legitimize its de jure status in the Pakistan polity as defined in the aftermath of the coup. It is the present regime’s inability to implement it reformist agenda that, in itself, seems to suggest that the whole enterprise is doomed to fail, because the present regime is in a no win situation; a situation, which offers no expedient or any politically risk free choices with which rectify the compounded mistakes of the last 53 years that are now mocking the ability of Pakistan, as a nation, to articulate a vision for its future. If this government is really serious and determined to rescue Pakistan from the quagmire of its own follies, it would have to express that resolve via a political will in order to affect true and meaningful changes, but it cannot for the simple reason that it does not want, nor does it seek to enter into a state of confrontation with the all powerful institution of the bureaucracy, which for all practical purposes runs and maintains the daily operations of government in Pakistani and without whose tacit or implicit support no government or military administration can carry out its policies.

The present government’s avowed intention is the full restoration of democracy in Pakistan, but that is easier said than implemented, because the required environment for the re-instituting democracy in Pakistan does not exist and it can not exist unless the bureaucracy amends its ways and facilitates the introduction of political reforms instead of hindering them just to protect its own vested political interests in the Pakistani political affairs. The bureaucracy is the sine qua non of the present government’s ability to institute its policies and without the full engagement of the bureaucracy the present political incarnation will slowly fade, as another failed chapter, into Pakistan’s already dismal past. Secondly, the present regime cannot reform the bureaucracy, as it needs to be, because that would take too much time and that is a precious commodity, which this regime cannot afford. Furthermore, despite the regime’s refusal to commit to a time frame for the restoration of full civilian rule in Pakistan, there seems to be an informal schedule under which it seems to be laboring and this schedule is directly proportional to the Pakistani peoples’ level of patience with the present government’s ability to carry out its intentions within a specified time period (not exceeding more than three years).

This time frame, for the government to earn its political spurs, takes on an added significance when it is considered that it is the required schedule for the introduction of grassroots democratic reforms in the country. According to the formula announced by the Chief Executive, during his March 25, 2000 speech to the nation, the local body’s electoral rolls will be completed by the August of this year and then the process of elections will take another year to implement true democracy in Pakistan. In other words, the whole process, including the provincial and federal elections will take (from the present time) about eighteen to twenty four months to complete. Another eighteen months, during which the final results of this plan, that is whether it works or not, will become apparent can be added to this schedule. In sum then, this whole process of restoring democratic rule in Pakistan will consume about three to four years. Right now all the political parties are waiting for the announcement of the electoral rolls, in August 2000, and after that there will be a period of suspended animation in Pakistan as everyone waits to analyze the results of the local body elections. To suggest this scenario in another way, the present government is acutely aware of the Pakistani publics’ impatience levels and it is heralding its intentions piece by piece to keep the public politically satisfied, while suggesting to them that it is actually doing something and to give an impression of a “political movement” towards the restoration of democracy in Pakistan.

In the final analysis, the actual devolution of power in Pakistan and the question whether it succeeds or fails will be determined not by the people of Pakistan through their ability to elect their representatives, but by the bureaucracy, which will be asked to implement this program. The regime’s scheme of devolving power to the grassroots and more crucially, giving the people financial autonomy from the provincial bureaucracy strikes at the very heart of the bureaucratic control in Pakistan; the ability determine the financial share for each local district. This scheme also seeks to lessen the powers of the District Commissioner, the demi-gods of Pakistani political culture, by giving them to local neighborhood councils and through a gerrymandering of the local districts to give more political freedom to the districts to minimize Islamabad’s excessive influence in local affairs. This is a revolutionary re-orientation of the Pakistani political constellation, because it seeks to amend the bureaucratic habits of the last 53 years by introducing a reformist policy in the very workings of the bureaucracy and how it has traditionally wielded its power in Pakistan.

Therein lies the rub, and the question that needs to be asked is whether the Pakistani bureaucracy is willing to implement a political process, which lessens and destroys its own vested interests in the political system of Pakistan?

The government has to, therefore, seek a mutually harmonious policy of cooperation with the bureaucracy to implement its policies. Therefore, it cannot resort to unilateral policies vis a vis the bureaucracy, because that will only alienate the bureaucracy and thus, the bureaucracy instead of being the exponents of change, as desired by this government, will emerge as, once more, the proponents of the status quo with a well defined interest in resisting the government’s reformist agenda. The government should gradually convince the bureaucracy that it is in the bureaucracy’s own interest, as a political institution, to re-formulate its modus oprendi concerning its own institutional perceptions of its political interests. Consequently, this government is beholden to the bureaucracy to implement its reforms and if the bureaucracy resists in carrying out those reforms, the public anger, at the failure of this government to fulfill its promises, will finally discredit the institution of the armed forces as never before in the history of Pakistan and that is a prophecy, which is the military’s worst nightmare and which it cannot afford to see being fulfilled. Hence, this government can not achieve an iota of change without the cooperation of the bureaucracy and thus, instead of attempting to implement its overly ambitious agenda, this government will do a far better service to the cause of democracy in Pakistan if it merely reforms, re-organizes and enlightens the bureaucratic mind-set to implement its policies.

The government has to realize that it can rule Pakistan, but it cannot run Pakistan or institute effective changes without a system, a set of implementing mechanisms, which will turn its objectives into reality. The armed forces, particularly the army, have to understand that it cannot by itself alleviate all the problems, which plaque Pakistan. The best it can do for the cause of democracy in Pakistan is to create a process, which can implement its required changes for the betterment of the Pakistani civic society and it can monitor that process from the barracks, but only as an interested party. This, then, raises the question about the government’s ability to deliver on its promises and the slowly emerging answer is that this government will not be able to implement its objectives, because of its Achilles’ Heel; the bureaucracy. Unless the government reforms the bureaucracy, it will fail, because the bureaucracy has no interest in reforming itself voluntarily and this suggests that as the times passes and nothing tangible happens, this government will become more desperate and that, in itself, implies a possible confrontation between the bureaucracy and the military. If that happens, then it will be the end of a mutually agreed upon quid pro quo, the military-bureaucracy nexus, that germinated during the time of Ayub Khan’s One Unit experiment and has been the source of most of the Pakistani civic problems.

The hidden horror of this scenario is that it will force a drastic change in the traditional power troika of Pakistani politics; military, bureaucracy and feudal interests. If the military and the bureaucracy fight, it will be interesting to observe with which interest the feudal class of Pakistan aligns itself since it is well represented in both the bureaucracy and the military. There is a distinct possibility that the feudal class, aided by the traders/merchant class, slowly emerging as a critical fulcrum of Pakistani political scene, will emerge as the strongest politically vested interest group in Pakistan. If that ever happens, it will be a Dantian nightmare fraught the gravest implications for Pakistan’s future, but even if that does not happen, it still would imply that the Pakistani polity will suffer from a political crisis for the next foreseeable future and that will, invariably, put strains on the Pakistani federation and its power sharing arrangements with the provinces. The provinces will exploit this opportunity to wrest more power from the center and in doing so will, not intentionally, but due to their short sighted policies, cause the strains of disintegration to widen in the façade of Pakistani politics and thus, the very geographical identity of Pakistan could likely suffer from this center-periphery struggle, whose roots, ironically, could be traced to this regime’s intentions of further strengthening the federation through the devolution of power to the grassroots.

This emerging scenario becomes even more appalling for Pakistan, when one considers the economic vitality of Pakistan. In the modern world of economic globalizations and global diplomacy, a nation’s ability to exercise its political independence rests on its economic strengths, which can be translated into political bargaining positions. Unfortunately for Pakistan, the International Monetary Fund/World Bank from Washington operates its economy and its crushing external debt precludes any room for political independence in the many foras of international opinions. Politically speaking, Pakistan has been “internationally gagged” by its inability to visualize an economic policy for the attainment of its political interests and as it still sinks further into the morass of its economic woes, it will find itself increasingly isolated internationally, because it will become prey to the forces of inter-provincial discords, which will seek to appropriate exclusive economic advantages for their own needs. Should the Pakistani federation exhibit signs of a political collapse, this hypothesis will become real due to the severe imbalance of political-economic development of Pakistani provinces. There already exists a certain amount of resentment in the provinces, concerning their economic fortunes vis a vis each other, and in the case of a political collapse, this resentment will turn into a nihilistic expression of a political Darwinism with all of its intended implications.

Also, given the newly emerging regimes of economic globalizations and their influence on the paradigms of international relations, due to Pakistan’s inability to coherently articulate it’s economic rationales, it will find itself being slowly marginalized, and then eventually isolated, due to it’s economic weaknesses. In the post-cold war, new world order, a nation’s economic policy is the logical extension of its foreign policy and two, together, become instrumental in creating the strategic interests for that nation. In this sense, nations will align themselves into certain strategic partnerships if they share an “economic vision” and not, because they may have been once upon a time each other’s “most allied allies”. Therefore, Islamabad has to re-energize its economic efforts or otherwise it will increasingly discover, much to its chagrin, that its vital national security concerns are being whittled away, because of its insignificance as an economically viable nation-state. Hence, if the present government/regime is really interested in the welfare of Pakistan, it should devote more effort to the revitalization of the Pakistani economy, which will in turn automatically bring about a democratic transformation, instead of imposing its version of democracy in Pakistan.

This will not only have an adverse effect on the internal political dynamics of Pakistan, but will also have a negative effect on the external policy interests of Pakistan. With Pakistan caught up in the vortex of internal problems, its’ ability to pursue its foreign policy objectives will suffer, because of its economic weakness and the instability it would be creating in the region. Pakistan holds a strategic position in the region; as a gateway to the Central Asian Republics, by its’ close geographical position to the economically vital Straits of Hormuz, but more importantly due to its status as a nuclear power state. Should Pakistan be consumed by its internal problems, it will find itself being increasingly pressurized to amend its foreign policy interests, such a roll back of its nuclear program; signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the final death nail for any government, either military or civil in Pakistan, the moderation of its position on Kashmir (the recognition of the Line of Control as an international border). The reality of the present situation is that Pakistan, due to the economic mismanagement of the last half a century or more, cannot exercise its sovereignty in foreign policy, because its sovereignty has being mortgaged to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In reality, Pakistan is an “aid economy”, which cannot work without the periodic infusions of loans, grants and other financial incentives to keep its economy from melting down and whose main international exports are “brain drain” and the export of capital in the terms of the repayments on its outstanding loans. Therefore, Pakistan cannot exist without loans from IMF or the World Bank and neither can the west afford to let it collapse economically, because of its nuclear card, but if Pakistan suffers from internal problems, there is an excellent chance that the west (and India) will exploit that crisis to enforce their intentions on Pakistan by offering certain “economic incentives” to Islamabad in return for a few “considerations”.

Consequently, Pakistan is at the crossroad of a Kafkaesque nightmare and it is increasingly getting bogged down in a lose-lose situation, both internally and externally. Hence, contrary to what has been promised, October 13, 1999 was not be the end of the beginning, but rather beginning of the end for Pakistan as a nation-state. Invoking the words of Abraham Lincoln, the future of Pakistan rests in the dissatisfied hands of the Pakistani people themselves and it will be their conduct, which will determine, for better or worse, what Pakistan will look like in the next decade. No matter how this situation is analyzed, the reality is that Pakistan is, and will be, facing its darkest years, darker and bloodier than its amputation from East Pakistan and if the people of Pakistan give up their ethno-provincial and religious differences, these years could be Pakistan’s “finest hour” and if they do not, then Pakistan’s future will be extremely nasty, brutish and short. As far as Pakistan and its future are concerned, the iron dice are now rolling and the people of Pakistan have to take a decision; self-interest or national interest and on the basis of this decision history will record its final verdict on Pakistan.

The only question is that the do the Pakistanis know the choices confronting them? Will they wake up from their utopian dreams in time and will they make the right choice?