No memo martyrs, please

[fatman17]

Opinion

No memo martyrs, please

Mohammad Malick ... The writer is editor The News, Islamabad.
Friday, December 23, 2011


Ah the irony of things. On the one hand, the stubbornly reluctant Americans have finally realised the advantages of replacing a fight-fight strategy with a talk-talk approach, an advice forever offered by Pakistan and hitherto ignored by its grudging ally. Yet, at the same time Islamabad and Rawalpindi have themselves embraced a mutually destructive fight-fight power equation. Is everybody going crazy in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, or is there a method to this madness?

The memo war has arguably degenerated into an open impending clash of institutions. On a second thought, maybe the clash has already started. Whatever little was left of the already frayed fig leaf was torn asunder by an exceptionally jingoistic prime minister on Thursday. Let’s mince no words here. Life cannot go back to its old ways any more. Rightly or wrongly, one side may have to give and sooner rather than later.

At a cursory glance, the unsheathing of the sword by the ruling party makes great political and electoral sense. It is besieged by a horde of seemingly impossible to resolve problems including but not limited to a crippling energy shortage; worsening fiscal crisis; a stagnant economy; horrendous flight of capital coupled with drying up of direct foreign investment; non-existent law and order; absence of governance; dwindling foreign reserves with little hope of timely replenishing and more. Barring the laudable achievements of bringing in a consensus NFC award, the 18th Constitutional amendment and a few similar initiatives, the government doesn’t exactly have an envious election-winning scorecard. So what’s the next best way to win elections? Easy, become martyrs. The hue or colour of such martyrdom doesn’t matter, as long it is wrapped in the national flag and happens in the name of protecting democracy. In 2008, it was the blood of the illustrious Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto that swept the party into power. Come the next general elections, the ruling dispensation would love to pander the body of a ‘mutilated democracy’. As a people, we love the perceived underdog and support the victim. And nobody knows it better than our seasoned political warlords.

The government’s strategy of creating a democracy-panic in the country, every time it finds itself in some sort of accountability dock, is now an all too familiar a pattern. So far, the tactic had repeatedly been used against the Supreme Court because of its ‘irritating’ habit of putting spanners in various dirty works of the government. The judges have been accused of endangering the ‘fragile democratic process’ because of their “judicial overreach”. And there were always those insulting and provocative press conferences by incensed democrats, purposely inviting the wrath of judges in a bid to divert attention from the real issues and hopefully create some judicial-martyrs. Sanity prevailed and so far the judges have sidestepped the naked IED.

Remember the time when the Supreme Court first took up the NRO case. All of a sudden, democracy faced the greatest threat to its existence. The same happened when the review petition of the same was being heard. Of course, when the revision petition was rejected, democracy almost perished. And democracy will unquestionably face another grave threat if and when the court insists upon the implementation of its already delivered verdicts. The memo affair has proven no different. Instead of ensuring an incisively exhaustive and honest investigation into the memo affair, the government is now clearly bent upon exploiting it as a martyr-making opportunity. Memogate was a simple isolated incident and only warranted a circumspect investigation into serious allegations against a Pakistani ambassador. Instead, it has deliberately been blown up into a full-scale conspiracy against democracy. Ridiculous.

The prime minister has claimed that a conspiracy against his democratically elected government is in full swing. Stopping a step short of identifying it by name, he accused the army of hatching a conspiracy against the government, and of course democracy. Such was his venom that he even intoned that the defence establishment was being paid from the national exchequer and should remember that it was subservient to the government and the parliament. Parliament, as he said, was the supreme institution of the country. No arguing here.

That democracy must reign in the country, regardless of who rules, is a given. When an elected prime minister of the country stands inside the holy citadel of the parliament and claims treasonous moves against democracy and democratic institutions, the nation is expected to, and must, rally behind him. But here lies the irritating rub. Which version of the PM do we believe? What cause of his do we rally to?

During the past fortnight alone, our dear prime minister has done more flip-flops than anyone can dare count. Just before this darned memo, or the frivolous “piece of paper”, to quote the honourable prime minister, had appeared on the political horizon it appeared that the PM and his generals lived in a Utopia. According to him, the army and the civil leadership were on the same page and the generals were paying due homage to their supreme commander and to the PM himself. Democracy, he would say was hail and hearty in this land of the pure and he was in “absolute command of all state organs including the armed forces”. But then came the memo, and everything changed. On the one hand, the PM rubbishes the memo as a fraud but at the same time eagerly claims Husain Haqqani’s scalp and that too because ‘his’ DG ISI felt good about the ‘now bad’ evidence. The DG ISI was patriotic then and treasonous now. Funny. The same Gen Kayani was good enough to be given a three-year extension not that long ago but is now a scheming Charlton presumably because his testimony in the memo case does not synthesis with that of Islamabad. Interesting.

If the prime minister is convinced that he is on the right and is genuinely fighting for democracy then it is incumbent upon him to stand up for the concept and the Constitution. If he believes that the COAS and his men are indulging in a macabre attempt to derail democracy for their own personal gains then he has to do more than just blow hot air. He must act and order the removal of any elements that illegally challenge the legal writ of the state. Consequences be damned. In such an eventuality, he must trust the people to stand behind him and support him to the end. And indeed they will, including the immensely powerful media. But we know that will not happen because this latest storm in the teacup is not about protecting democracy but about shielding political and personal fiefdoms.

It is the fervent hope of the saner elements in this country that institutional insanity is eschewed in favour of greater national interest. To quote the words of the PPP’ s own young chairman, Bilawal Bhutto, “Democracy is the best revenge”. Could there be a better revenge than forcing a reluctant regime to undergo the harsh test of facing its suffering people and in turn suffer an unsparing accountability come the next elections? As matters stand today, the government would love to provoke the military establishment into retaliating out of the deliberately created fear of its own survival and thus unwittingly transform a highly unpopular government into a popular democratic victim of undemocratic forces. Let the prime minister fume and thunder, let him roll a head or two but whatever happens, the PM must not be helped to transform his dirty brigade into gallant democratic martyrs. What this country needs is a memo investigation, not memo martyrs.

Email: mohammad.malick1@gmail.com

 

[Pakistanisage]

I think that whole drama perpetrated by Zardari leaving for Dubai under the guise of heart attack was staged so that Zardari could go and consult with his US handlers. After receiving assurances, PEE PEE PEE has gone on an offensive, but they fail to understand that US is an unreliable partner who is prone to changing partners midway.

 

[Patriot]

Too much bullshit - I won't be surprised if President and Haqqani justify memo in the name of democracy.The fact is that Armed Forces want Supreme Court to punish the perpetrators of MEMO but PPP is trying to hide their guilt by showing that the case is against democracy.I am 100% sure there won''t be any role of Army on the front line - It will be the Supreme Court (Chief Justice) who will take decision.You cannot justify criminality for the sake of democracy.

 

[fatman17]

Don’t discount the civilians yet

For any observ*er of civil-milita*ry relati*ons in Pakist*an, lack of coup is a develo*pment both fascin*ating & positi*ve.

By Ejaz Haider

Published: December 23, 2011

Much has been and is being written about the current stand-off between the civilian principals and the military. Everyone is waiting with bated breath for the coup de grace by the military. No one is betting on the civilians. But the immediate is making us ignore a crucial fact: this memo, only a decade ago, would have seen the 111 Brigade roll out of the barracks.

That has not happened and is very unlikely. For any observer of civil-military relations in Pakistan, this development is both fascinating and positive. In fact, the memo, wittingly or unwittingly, relied on this by first invoking the threat of a coup and then formulating a strategy to counter that possibility. Whoever was behind it knew that far from the military planning a coup, it was time to play an active hand and mount one on the military.

An Icarian move for sure, its significance lay in two facts: the civilians wanted to take control and they felt the power of the military had diluted to a point where it could be chastened with some external help.

At this stage in the game, it was an excessive hand. The military’s power has definitely diluted and mounting a hard coup is not a clever option for several reasons. The military also appreciates that strategy is not just about projecting power but understanding the limitations of power, the latter being of greater importance. However, the civilians, going by this memo, miscalculated both the balance of power and the timing. Yet, as this episode in Pakistan’s history is played out, the military is resorting to indirect fire to take out the target.

That’s the positive and brings us to the central question: will it succeed?

The answer is not as simple as we might think. Another question is important: what is the military relying on and what would getting rid of Z beget it?

It has put up with Z & Co for nearly four years; during that period it has effectively controlled the foreign and security policies and continues to do so. The working arrangement was to have respective domains and not cross tracks. That’s Pakistan’s version of civil-military ‘balance’. The military was happy because the arrangement allowed it carte blanche in its areas of deep interest without having to project power overtly which is increasingly problematic; it allowed the civilians a free hand to politick.

With the memo, the civilians encroached on the military’s domain. Perfectly legitimate going by the normative belief in civilian supremacy but unrealistic given both the power configuration and the otherwise complete abdication of foreign and security policies to the military. You can’t go into mortal combat unprepared and you can’t, when you didn’t even try to salami-slice the military’s power, attempt a major, frontal assault on its centre of gravity.

It was bound to fail and now that the purported plan has been outed, the military has unsheathed the bayonet. Yet, and that’s what I find fascinating, the military knows its limitations and the civilians, their power. If this game is to be played, it has to be one of brinkmanship involving shared risk. The prime minister, unusually, has thrown down the gauntlet. He knows the military cannot get rid of Z constitutionally. But he has also signalled to them that the military can’t take out Z but live with the PPP. If Z goes, so does the PPP. And if the PPP goes, it will create a political crisis.

If the military is smart, it won’t pick up the gauntlet.

By standing up to the military, Gilani is not saying we want to fight with you but indicating the possibility of going back to the original arrangement and finishing the term as per the earlier script. He is also relying on the military’s appreciation that instability also hurts its core interests, especially at a time when the GHQ is having a face-off with the United States.

The military can rely on the PPP’s growing unpopularity and a strategy that combines the political opposition to the PPP, the judiciary and sections of the media. But that still does not count for much short of finding some way of ‘convincing’ Z that he must leave. That is unlikely. The military’s option then is to either do something that would help the PPP’s shrinking political capital or do the smarter thing and find a modus vivendi and let the PPP go into the next elections and get a fair drubbing at the hustings.

The possibility of a compromise therefore still exists. And if one were to be reached, we should, in the days to come, either see a bilateral meeting between Kayani and Gilani or even one involving Z. Interesting days ahead.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 24th, 2011.

 

[fatman17]

The Plot Thickens in Pakistan

Posted: 12/23/11


President Asif Ali Zardari is back from Dubai, where he went to seek medical treatment. His departure from the national scene set off a number of rumors. The most popular being that he will not return and will possibly resign. In response, the president went to the extent of talking about waging a war against the constitution if some action is taken against him. Neither the rumors nor the threat has materialized. There are, however, shadows of a coup in the making.

At least that is the assessment of the prime minister of Pakistan, Yousuf Raza Gilani. The premier, who is constitutionally powerful but a stooge to Zardari in reality, is fearing the army might pack up the government with the memogate scandal running as the central theme. The issue has been picked up by the supreme court where the government is saying the apex court does not have the jurisdiction on the matter -- a stance not favored by the judges.

It is not Gilani but Zardari who is at the center of the storm. The president, who is also the co-chairman of the ruling Pakistan's Peoples Party, has a history of constitutional violations. As discussed before, he technically has very little powers but has encroached upon the turf of Gilani, who has accommodated him.

The ensuing circus has baffled everyone, including the Americans. Ironically, during times of real democracy in Pakistan from 1988-99, they engaged solely with the elected prime ministers. It was also around this time that the military establishment saw its power waning -- Nawaz Sharif even dismissed an army chief. Technically speaking, he also sacked General Pervez Musharraf though the latter was successful in staging a coup. Before that, in the 1970s, Americans held court with Bhutto, who was also an elected prime minister.

Not this time. Their preference for Zardari has complicated things. The arrangement has worked for the last three years but seems like it is inching towards an ugly end. The supreme court is growing wary of the presidential theatrics. The judges want Zadari's reply in important cases as the chairman of his political party. They do not get it because the president asserts his constitutional immunity in response. Now they have asked him to submit reply as the president, which has again fallen on deaf ears.

The presidential immunity will not deter Zardari from lashing out at his opponents at the upcoming death anniversary of his wife Benazir Bhutto. As has become the norm, the president takes the stage as a political leader and projects himself as the savior of Pakistan.

Pakistanis hate the presidential antics. They do not want military rule either. The encouraging thing for Gilani is the fact that the opposition is not welcoming to the idea of a coup. The opposition leader in the parliament has offered his help as long as the government relies on the elected representatives, instead of relying on backdoor machinations.

The supreme court is also likely to thwart any nefarious attempts by the military. Then there is the powerful media that will not stay quiet. Even the military chief has dismissed such rumors.

There is still hope for Gilani, who can overcome his fears by fulfilling his duties as the prime minister. Zardari can also save his skin if he is eager to adopt the same role as of Ms. Partibha Patil, the president of India. This will require rising above his political affiliations and letting go of his administrative duties . That's what his real job description actually is. Given his track record, however, there is little hope of that. The power-hungry and constitution-mocking president of Pakistan is digging his own grave.

Follow Saad Khan on Twitter: Twitter

 

[fatman17]

Opinion

Are polls the solution?


Dr Farrukh Saleem

Sunday, December 25, 2011


What is our real problem? Answer: “It’s the economy, stupid.” (The phrase was first used by Bill Clinton’s campaign team during their successful 1992 presidential campaign.) Within the Pakistani economy there’s the internal sector and the external account. Within the internal sector the mother of all problems is the budgetary deficit. The budget deficit has three major components: the political costs of running the state of Pakistan, the deficit in the power sector and the political costs of running public-sector enterprises.

Here’s a look at the political costs of running the state of Pakistan: In 2008, Pakistani taxpayers spent Rs4 million per day for keeping the Cabinet Division up and running. That cost has now gone up to Rs2.8 billion a year or Rs8 million per day. The Prime Minister’s Secretariat gulps down Rs540 million a year and the President’s House Rs40 million a month, every month[/B].(this is sick)

The deficit in the power sector – a consequence of a political failure to reform – now stands at a tall 2.5 percent of Pakistan’s GDP, or Rs1 billion a day, every day of the year. The power sector has already borrowed some Rs500 billion from the banking sector and now has the potential of taking down the entire banking sector with it.

Public-sector enterprises (PSEs) are losing money like never before and are taking on debt like never before. PIA has debts of Rs100 billion. Pakistan Railways loses Rs8 million a day. Pakistan Steel is in a Rs44-billion-deep hole. Collectively, the PSEs manage to lose Rs200 billion a year.

Here’s a paragraph from one of my previous column: “Rs1,000,000,000,000 is the difference between what the Government of Pakistan (GOP) earns and what it spends. In effect, GOP loses Rs300 crore [Rs3 billion] a day, every single day. That amounts to losing Rs11 crore [Rs10.1 million] per hour, or Rs20 lakh [Rs2 million] per minute for every single minute of the entire year. GOP would have lost Rs60 lakh [Rs6 million] by the time you will finish reading this brief commentary.”

This is not just corruption but corruption on top of incompetence; I would say 50 percent corruption and 50 percent incompetence. Remember: the cost of this corruption-cum-incompetence is Rs1,000,000,000,000 a year.

And how are we currently stitching this trillion-rupee corruption-cum-incompetence black hole? Answer: By printing Rs3 billion a day, every day. And, that’s inflation, plain and simple.

Now on to the external sector. As of Dec 9, net reserves held by the State Bank of Pakistan stood at $12.8 billion. Please consider: One, for the month of September the current-account deficit jumped to a colossal $1.03 billion (for that one month alone). Two, the IMF has to be paid back $2.4 billion. Three, servicing of foreign debt plus foreign debt repayments of at least $1 billion. By end-2012, the State Bank will be left with $2 billion or so – and that means massive capital flight, economic turmoil and increasing rates of interest (if not outright default).

According to Dr Amjad Waheed, chief executive officer of Fullerton Asset Management, “in Pakistan’s context the current account deficit is a bigger problem than the budget deficit as it cannot be managed by printing of notes.”

How would elections solve any of our real problems? If we get a government that can print dollars!

The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad. Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com

 

[Jango]

I can see the government trying very hard to get a martyr image for itself.

Unfortunately, it won't happen.

 

[*Awan*]

i hear that govt is planning to fire secretary of defense.
after that by the date of 27th december govt will issue a notification to cancel the extention of pasha and at the end they will fire kiani.because they both are pain in american ***.
this thing is planned when ghadari was in dubai.and now they received the green signals from americans.if army try to maneuver they will put pressure from eastern and western borders and also mobilize the world media against them.
how much truth in it?

 

[Jango]

Can the Government fire him?

He is a top grade officer, not a politician.

A CSS officer.

 

[araz]

The last thing that the army must do is interfere.It would be the worst possible outcome. These Donkeys need to face the music in front of the public at the ballot. They need to go to the masses and ask for the vote again and have chappals hurled at them again. This is the only solution for our country. The COAS is not more important than the country and his dismissal will not change the thinking in the army as the army is not about individuals, but about the institution. This is the best revenge for the country.
Araz

 

[fatman17]

On the brink

Asif Ezdi
Monday, December 26, 2011


The writer is a former member of the Pakistan Foreign Service.

Finally, it’s official. The government and the army are on a potentially suicidal collision course. Gilani made two fiery speeches last Thursday declaring that he would not allow the army to form “a state within a state”. He also spoke of conspiracies to pack up the elected government. Gilani’s tirade was followed by a Reuters story that evening in which “military sources” were quoted as saying that the army is fed up with Zardari and wants him out of office but through legal means. The military spokesman declined to comment, confirming by implication that the report was correct.

Gilani asserted that the government’s differences with the army are over the question of civilian control over the military. This is not true. Not even the military leadership today disputes the principle of civilian supremacy.

The real cause of the present tensions between the government and the army is the PPP leadership’s unwillingness to allow an independent and impartial investigation into Memogate. The reason is simple: Zardari is afraid that such an inquiry might reveal his fingerprints on the memo. Therefore, Zardari and co. would like to leave the matter solely to the Parliamentary Committee on National Security, where the ruling coalition enjoys a majority and would be able to vote down any adverse findings and conclusions.

The government has another fresh worry. If the Abbottabad Commission comes to the finding that the raid that killed Osama last May was facilitated by the liberal issuance of visas to American spies in Pakistan, further questions would be raised in the public mind about the government’s willingness to stand up to Washington on vital questions of national security.

Zardari and his camp have not only raised a false alarm about military intervention, they have also been targeting the Supreme Court. Zardari is not even sure of American support any longer. After having served US interests loyally for more than three years, he is heartbroken at the thought that even Washington might be considering dumping him.

The fact is that it is not democracy but Zardari’s political survival which is under threat. And the threat comes not from any machinations and intrigues by the military but from the government’s own lack of performance, economic mismanagement, corruption, poor governance and now, to top it all, what looks like its willingness to compromise national security and the country’s nuclear deterrent in order to remain in favour in Washington.

In a meeting with journalists on December 17, Gilani reportedly branded Mansoor Ijaz as a “total liar”. Ijaz should not be believed, Gilani said, because he was not even a Pakistani but a stranger, a farangi and a “nobody”. One might ask Gilani that if Ijaz is all that, then why did Benazir remain in touch with him during her years in exile, why did Zardari have a meeting with him in May 2009, and why did Haqqani consort with such a person?

The question whether it is Ijaz or Haqqani who has been lying can only be determined in an impartial inquiry, which has not even begun as yet. Haqqani’s denial of having “written”, “authored” or “drafted” the memo brings to mind Bill Clinton’s famous statement that he had not had “sexual relations” with Monika Lewinsky. It all depends on how you define “sexual relations” – or in Haqqani’s case, how you define “writing”, “authoring” or “drafting”. If it means putting pen on paper, Haqqani did not write the memo. But that is not what Ijaz has alleged. According to him, the message was dictated to him by Haqqani and its content originated entirely from him.

Ijaz has also released loads of purported BlackBerry messenger exchanges with Haqqani in support of his assertions. Haqqani has not produced any evidence to disprove that he exchanged those messages.

And speaking of farangis, isn’t James Jones one too? Yet, Gilani has so much faith in this particular farangi that after Jones submitted his affidavit in the memo case, our prime minister demanded that the matter should now come to an end. Otherwise, he said, the Americans would start wondering how little political sense (shaur) the Pakistani people have.

Gilani need not worry, at least not as far as Jones is concerned. Jones has already made known what he thinks of the Pakistanis. In the same interview in which he admitted having sent the memo to Mullen, Jones also said Pakistan was a “country hell-bent on self-destruction.” There was “no logic” to what its senior leadership, civilian and military, did, especially their unwillingness to take advantage of the generous opportunities presented by Washington. Jones no doubt included Gilani among the civilian leaders who behaved so illogically.

Yet, Gilani is very generous to Jones and unquestioningly accepts his claim, made without producing any evidence from the record of his phone calls, that Ijaz had called him a few days before May 9, the date on which, according to Ijaz, Haqqani first contacted him in connection with the memo.

But nothing better exemplifies the PPP leadership’s twisted logic than the eagerness with which it has jumped at the passing mention by Ijaz in one of his BBM exchanges with Haqqani of a report attributed to a senior US intelligence source that the ISI head “asked for and received permission from senior Arab leaders to sack Zardari.”

This piece of “intelligence”, given by Ijaz “for what it is worth” – a phrase which the Oxford Dictionary defines as meaning that it was given without a guarantee of its truth – was made the stuff for a sensational blog in a British daily on an ISI “plot” to involve foreign countries in Pakistan’s domestic power struggles and then included by the government, without any attempt at prior verification, in its reply to the Supreme Court. Even after the army has clarified that Pasha did not meet any Arab leader on the dates in question, the government has not had the honesty to correct itself.

Gilani’s verbal assault on the army leadership was an act of desperation to prevent an impartial inquiry into Memogate. It has recklessly pushed Pakistan near the precipice by adding a first class crisis of political-military relationship to the many security, economic and governance challenges the country is faced with.

The first priority for both the political and military leadership should now be to walk the country back from the brink. That would be easy enough if the present standoff were about the military’s subordination to the civilian government. Kayani has already declared that the army supports the democratic process and is cognisant of its constitutional obligations and responsibilities.

Zardari for his part would have a chance of bringing the tension down when he speaks on December 27, on the fourth anniversary of Benazir’s assassination in his first public appearance after his recent illness. But the real problem is different. It is Memogate inquiry by the Supreme Court and that is an issue on which there is little give in the positions taken by the two sides.

The very fact that Zardari is opposing the investigation suggests that he has something to hide. Kayani on the other hand was very categorical when he said that “irrespective of all other considerations, there can be no compromise on national security”.

In the meantime, Kayani has done well to squash speculation about an impending coup. But he also needs to do more. He must dissociate himself from those of his generals who have been talking of pushing Zardari from office “through legal means”. That is not the business of the military and it is a breach of their oath under the constitution. Evidently, there are still some crazy generals who harbour designs to influence the political process in the country. Those “military sources” who spoke to Reuters last Thursday about removing Zardari from the presidency should be identified by Kayani himself and held accountable.

Email: asifezdi@yahoo.com