Pakistan’s “General Retreat”

Hittu Saluja

Here was anticipation, trepidation and fear amidst crisis and drama when General Parvez Musharraf toppled the Nawaz Sharif government in Pakistan. The coup that he staged was a move to scuttle efforts by Sharif to oust Musharraf as the Army Chief. Inheriting the legacy of military coups, General Musharraf for more than seven years did everything to weaken the very fibre of democracy, leaving no scope for filling the political vacuum in the state. The platform that was promised to bring in “enlightened modernization” transformed into a chessboard where every move was safely played to stay in power at all costs. Referendum was imposed ignoring the sentiments of masses, electoral reforms were introduced to suit his circumstances, the freedom of judiciary was compromised amidst administrative loopholes, Big brother America was pampered to the extent of going against the Taliban, who at one time was given legitimacy and of course, mullahs and religious hawks were both engaged at the same go to avoid any kind of street backlash. Parvez Musharraf’s Power Politics The uniformed President has supposedly played as a pre-eminent political actor who is speculated to have undergone a power-sharing deal with self-exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. This move has not only ended the scope of a palpable opposition of Nawaz-Benazir duo against him in the coming elections in December 2007. Reports are that Musharraf has further played tactfully by spreading the rumor of negotiating such a deal so that the possibility of both the exiled Prime-Ministers lobbying against him. This has proved that like other insecure regimes before his coming to the power, perhaps he is too insecure to change the face of Pakistan. This self-proclaimed hybrid form of democracy might have fostered the idea of a modern, secular and enlightened Islamic state but the fact of the matter is that this deadly combination of civilian politicians and military men are busy following just one ‘call to duty’ and that is towards General Musharraf. There is an unfathomable fissure between what he promised and what he actually performed. Forgetful Musharraf and his Promises All those jarring promises of liberating women from conformists and giving them their due share in the society seem have proved to be superficial. The President and Chief of Army Staff General Musharraf when proposed the Protection of Women Bill in 2006, could not but stand the heat of fundamentalists sitting in the opposition as well as radical clerics in the mosque. His one step forward has compelled him to take two steps backward just to preserve the status quo. The end result is, on one hand he gave his consent to the Protection of Women Bill on December 1, 2006 but on the other hand he could not change Hudood in practice, where rape is still more knotty. If a woman fails to prove that she has been raped, she can be framed under fornication and adultery. Under the Hudood Law, she is considered guilty unless she proves her innocence. (Proof of innocence requires that the rape victim must produce "at least four Muslim adult male witnesses, about whom the Court is satisfied" who saw the actual act of penetration. Inability to do so may result in her being jailed, or perhaps even sentenced to death for adultery.) Not just that, his very stand on cases like Mukhtaran Mai was unlike a liberal-minded progressive leader. He put Mukhtaran, a rape victim in “protective custody” so that she could not testify in the hearings of Amnesty International in the US Congress. ‘M’ is the word for Pakistan This dilemma of indecisiveness is what has rendered him more unpopular. The strong sounding General most of the times was found almost deweaponised in front of religious radicals. The three “Ms”- the mosques, the Madrassas and the market (the bazaris) are believed to be the main irritants for his administration. Every progressive provision announced whether it is the deweaponisation of Madrassas or the introduction of the Turkish model of a modern and secular Islamic state or reviewing obsolete laws like Hudood and Blasphemy is strongly rejected by the powerful bazaari-fundamendalist nexus. Instead they have laid their own list of demands like restoration of Friday as the weekly holiday instead of Sunday; withdrawal of the proposal for the reservation of 50 per cent of the seats in the new local bodies for women by maintaining that this would "spread vulgarity in politics"; rejecting conditions of the IMF and to Islamise the economy. Another recent ruckus has been created by Lal Masjid clerics who dubbed the Musharraf government as “un-Islamic” if Sharia is not imposed universally in Pakistan. The Jamia Hafsa girls’ madrassa has even occupied a children’s library because their mosque was demolished. The problem of madrassas in Pakistan is not new but this time it has posed a serious threat to the Musharraf regime. It is believed that many students at the Jamia Hafsa girls’ madrassa are from poor families apparently from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) who have been either "kidnapped" or "bought". They are trained for suicide attacks and brainwashed into believing that the world is a temporary abode. A media report states, “These students told the people kidnapped by them that at present they numbered only 7,000, but when their force increased to 70,000 they would dismiss President Pervez Musharraf, seize power in the country and impose Sharia". These radical voices in Pakistan are abjectly intense to the extent that they call democracy, a flawed system. Maulana Abdul Aziz, one of the clerics of the Lal Masjid, said, “Democracy is nothing but counting of heads. It cannot differentiate between good and bad people, as in this system the vote of a devout Muslim equals the vote of a frail Muslim." These multiple jolts to the Musharraf regime raises a number of questions…Is he afraid? …Is he powerless? …Is he insecure? While he has displayed no shilly-shallying in confronting political opposition at the risk of street debacle, he has hesitatingly shown an unwillingness to deal with the Islamic parties. Instead he has allowed himself to be browbeaten by them giving way to their demands. Experts maintain that religious orthodoxy is deep rooted in Pakistan and it has its strong hold even in the Army. So is this the case of the back-seat driver using him as a portico for the steady implementation of their beliefs? There seems to be an army within an army or a Junta within Junta that is looking at the state of affairs and they claim that General Musharraf was not the one who captured power, but the Armed Forces collectively, and put him where he is today. Therefore the government cannot contain them because it maintains, “If we hit them with a stick, they will hit us with a gun”. ‘Jehad’: A conceptual miscalculation Moreover, the General himself has further ruined things by maneuvering “Jehad” as per his own suitabilities. He categorized ‘Jehad’ as domestic, regional and global. On one hand he condemns ‘jehad’ at the domestic level and global level because if the former disrupts the smooth functioning of the government, the latter is a policy compulsion of being supportive to America. This conceptual miscalculation becomes evident when Musharraf makes the rhetoric of the regional ‘jehad’ as the war for independence apparent in Kashmir. This biased view on ‘Jehad’ as the good (regional), the bad (domestic) and the ugly (global) has pushed Pakistan into a vicious problem. An old saying that goes "Brother, looking for the path after you started on your journey?" fits Musharraf. His conceptual fallacies, domestic political pragmatism, and administrative miscalculations are both cause and effect of the present turmoil in Pakistan. Daring Judiciary Vs Jaded Musharraf The recent operational miscalculation made by Musharraf was his open-duel with the Chief Justice of Pakistan. He tried to suppress the voice of lawyers and judges but for the first time in Pakistan`s history a nation-wide movement of lawyers objected to the autocratic dismissal of the CJ and demanded independence of the judiciary. The resignations of some judges, the deputy attorney general and demand of the Supreme Court judge that a full SC bench be constituted to hear a petition filed by the CJ are all indications that the judiciary is responding to this `call to duty`. Ironically, he acted like a self-perpetuating dictator and tried to muzzle the media that reported against the government machinery. Geo TV that telecast live videos of the legal fraternity protest against the government was banned and its office was tried ransacked. Later Musharraf had to withdraw the ban by himself appearing on the channel. So the Pervez Musharraf led government has to counter a major credibility deficit and the only alternative left with him is either to deliver or face the heat of his own promises. The restoration of democracy is one of his promises and he should not miss the chance this time. Democracy may render him less powerful but surely can take him out of the legitimacy dilemma. Unlike 2002, when referendum with large scale rigging and manipulations showed him the way of the power-puffed post, 2007 should change his heart at least if he wants to change the face of Pakistan.