Musharraf's unfinished agenda
By Ahmed Quraishi
Someone is trying to pull a 'velvet revolution' on Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf. And anyone who believes this is about democracy is a fool.
Many in Washington and inside its inept puppet administration in Kabul are trying to find a scapegoat for their failures in Afghanistan.
And a bankrupt and unimaginative Pakistani political class is being opportunistic as usual. Musharraf must counter this with determination. The Pakistani president owes this to the uncounted silent Pakistanis who backed his original reform agenda of 1999.
The events of the last few weeks and months reinforce the notion held by a segment of Pakistanis that restoring a premature democracy in Pakistan in 2002 was a wrong step. It re-empowered a largely mediocre political class, undercut efforts to cultivate grassroots democratic conditions, and disappointed ordinary Pakistanis who dreamed of fundamental change.
Our best bet was an enlightened, guided democracy, giving ordinary Pakistanis the chance to produce new leadership. What we got after 2002 is a half-baked deal. Apart from partially tarnishing President Musharraf's image, his new political 'allies', products of the 2002 election, failed to back him in crucial moments, during an insurgency, for example, by
a politician-turned-terrorist in our Balochistan province last year, and during the
so-called 'judicial crisis' last month.
President Musharraf hasn't lost the battle. Not yet at least.
He must assert power, reunite the silent majority of Pakistanis like he did before, and give his bold reform agenda one last push. He must bank on younger Pakistanis where his popularity is highest. His legacy must be a strong and proud Pakistan and a political culture that is thoroughly reformed of its chronic ills.
Beginning with the visit of US president George W Bush to Pakistan in March 2006, and ending with the events of the weeks following March 9 this year,
it's clear that odd bed-fellows with opposing objectives are coming together to unseat one of the most decisive and nationalist presidents our nation has seen in a long time.
The entire anti-Musharraf campaign claims its roots in democracy. That is a brazen lie. Independent Pakistani television networks -- the most visible sign of a vibrant Pakistani civil society -- are a gift of this so-called 'military dictator." In fact, one glance at the quality of leadership of our political elite, especially the one that ruled the country in the 1990s, and the notion it could have had the stomach to unleash and nurture such a free media in Pakistan seems ridiculous at best.
No political leader in Pakistan has ever tolerated the kind of criticism President Gen Musharraf is tolerating these days from the independent Pakistani TV stations.
Whether anyone likes to admit it or not, a
military-led administration in Pakistan has laid the foundation of a vibrant economic and political liberalisation in the country unlike anything most Pakistanis have seen since the 1960s.
A second
misleading claim in this anti-Musharraf campaign is that somehow an 'exiled' secular and democratic Pakistani 'leadership' exists that could do a better job than President Musharraf. If this leadership is so secular and democratic, how come their political parties don't reflect those core values? Why it is that Benazir Bhutto is a 'lifetime chairperson' of her party in the worst tradition of Central African 'banana republics'? Why it is that dissent is unthinkable within the ranks of Mr Nawaz Sharif's own political faction?
The truth is, the worst stereotypes about Pakistan would have come true by now -- Talibanisation, extremist nuclear takeover, disintegration -- had this great nation continued to be governed by politicians of the calibre we have seen in the 1990s. Anyone supporting politicians of this calibre is not serving the cause of democracy in Pakistan.
Our nation needs an enlightened, guided democracy with fundamental changes in its constitution and political culture. And President Musharraf is capable of delivering this agenda.
A reform-minded president like him who seized power in extraordinary circumstances -- (his plane was hijacked in the air by a serving prime minister and told to land in India!) --cannot have his hands tied by a set of laws that may simply not be suitable to the country and need to be changed.
Our parliamentary form of government is at the core of the ineffectiveness of the Pakistani political system. Our experience of the 1960s, 1970s, and the
present administration should encourage President Musharraf to introduce a robust presidential form of democracy in Pakistan.
After empowering ordinary Pakistanis, women and minorities by setting up local governments across the nation, the Musharraf administration needs to follow up by increasing the administrative units in the country from four provinces into at least a dozen more. This will strengthen Pakistan, improve services, and put an end to narrow ethno-religious politics.
On foreign policy, Washington must clearly be told that our cooperation in the war on terror cannot come at the expense of our people's interests, especially when we have outdone the Americans, NATO and the inept Afghan security forces combined. On Kashmir, the position declared by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz -- trade in exchange for progress on Kashmir -- will positively resonate with millions of Pakistanis. And on Palestine, Musharraf must continue his efforts to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians on the condition that parties to the conflict must recognise each other's right to exist.
President Musharraf has been trying hard to convince his opponents that he is a liberal democrat. He shouldn't. His opponents will never acknowledge it. That's part of our ailing political culture. To change it, one of the biggest changes the Musharraf administration can bring is to
force our political parties to hold internal elections. No party should be eligible to contest elections if the observers of the Election Commission cannot certify that the political party in question held free and fair internal elections.
President Musharraf has given Pakistan the most stable, visionary, and forward looking leadership our nation has seen in years. Single-handedly, he expanded Pakistan's role from being just another South Asian country to a nation playing wider roles in West and Central Asia.
In order to get over his recent problems, both real and invented, he needs to go back to the promise that propelled him in the eyes of his compatriots back in October 1999.
That is his unfinished agenda.
The writer is a freelance columnist and a TV show host. Email:
[email protected]-
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=50521
.
